I must say that David Cameron is coming along rather well as a comic character. Take a look at this from page 2 of today's Financial Times ...  'Mr Cameron sought yesterday to attempt a return to business as usual by announcing a voter-friendly policy to ensure greater transparency in local government. Any council worker earning £58000 or more would see their pay details published under a Tory government, he promised.'

Do you get it? Lord Ashcroft can buy a whacking great chunk of his party, pay for a whacking great chunk of the campaign to make him PM, and he will not ask questions or give answers, and when the public demands to know more, he will stamp his little feet and say it is none of your damned business and the matter is jolly well closed. But if you're on just over a grand a week, we'll slap you all over the internet.

Put to one side the piddlingological nature of it, reflected in the fact that most media outlets ignored this shiny new policy, and the FT included it inside a story headlined 'Embattled Cameron fails to draw line under Ashcroft affair.'

The real point is that he and his jittery advisers cannot see the irony.  And that is because for all his talk of detoxing the Tory brand, a line swallowed so easily by most of the media for most of his leadership, Cameron has not fundamentally changed his party at all.

Which is why Tory candidates and activists have been flocking to get media and political training from the Young Britons' Foundation, a group which echoes the view of the Tory Right that the NHS is a waste of money, global warming is a scam, and we should liberalise our gun laws, not least so that environmental trespassers can be shot. 

These are views so extreme you'd think a detoxing brand manager like DC would want to distance his party. But this week party chairman Eric Pickles and defence spokesman Liam Fox spoke at the YBF parliamentary rally at the Houses of Parliament. It doesn't mean they endorse all their views. But it does show where many Tory hearts lie, and that their Right wing continues to hold considerable sway.

It has been a bad week for Cameron. The good news for Labour is he seems unable to see how to get back in the groove. Could that be because politics is about the things he doesn't do well, policy and strategy, and not the things he does do well, which are all in the short term communications department?

** Buy The Blair Years online and raise money to help fight the Tories http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

PS ... lovely sunny day in North London. Will be nice to be able to walk to a match for once, rather than spend four hours in a car. Arsenal away. I'd like to say I have good vibes. However ...  

Of course one of the problems with a blog is that people read it, and can use it to try to embarrass you.

So there I was, at a Labour fundraiser in Dulwich last night, and local MP Tessa Jowell introduced me by reading my blog of Wednesday in which I admitted I sometimes found these events a chore.

Quite clever reverse psychology really because it meant I suddenly felt extra pressure to look like I was enjoying it, and to put more into the speech, the q and a and then - bane of the life of a Labour after dinner guest speaker - the auction. To remind you, the reason I was writing about the chore of some was because of the special enjoyment of the one I did in Thurrock with Elvis aka Mark Wright on Tuesday.

But Tessa can be assured last night's was also in the 'better than most' category. And the reason was not Elvis, alas absent, but the combination of the changed political mood (a trend developing here) a passionate question from the floor about 'why didn't we do more to talk up the record?' and, psychologically related to that, the fact that the top earners in the auction were signed pieces of legislation, with four figures top price going to a framed copy of the Minimum Wage Act, signed by TB, JP and the current Cabinet. Good money too for the Belfast Agreement signed by TB and the Olympic Act 2006, which paved the way for London 2012, signed by TB, GB and Tessa.

Three great achievements of a Labour government being used to raise the money needed to fight Ashcroft's millions and ensure further great achievements in the future.

There was definitely the feeling not only that some voters were coming back to Labour, but signs of activism were growing too.

With the Tories spending millions on a fairly traditional campaign - posters, emphasis on media management, direct mail in marginals (very New Labour '97) - Labour need to rely far more on face to face campaigning, social networking, liberating and empowering activists to run their own campaigns. Four times as many people say they are influenced by friends and family in their choices as by advertising.

I emphasised that it was still going to be an incredibly tough fight to win a fourth term, and that the Tories still had a lot stacked in their favour.

However ... was it Theodore Roosevelt who said 'believe you can, and you're half way there' ?A few months back, it was not that easy to detect the belief that we could. Last night, it was there in plenty. The 'half way there' moment, at a time the Tories suddenly feel they are moving backwards not forward.

Ps, We also raised a few hundred quid from a copy of Machiavelli's 'The Prince,' in which Peter M signed himself as 'the REAL' Prince. But how silly of Peter, so not Machiavellian at all, to sign a book that I was auctionining. Suffice to say I had the last word.

** whilst on books, buy The Blair Years here and raise money to help the Labour campaign http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Lord Ashcroft, happy birthday to you.

Yes, the Great Man of Mystery celebrates his 64th birthday today. But three problems may be casting a cloud over the cake-cutting. First, he is being talked about in the media, which he seems not to like. Second, despite David Cameron's best efforts to say 'the matter is closed,' it most certainly is not. And third, what on earth will Dave, George, William et al get for the GMM as a present ... I mean what do you give to a man who has everything, including a fair chunk of his own political party?

What they could all do with is some half-decent political judgement. One of the reasons we had a reasonably smooth election campaign in 1997 (admittedly with a lot of paddling beneath the surface) was that in the years leading up to it, not just TB, but JP, GB, Peter Mandelson and I were determined that come the campaign, we had to have an answer to all the difficult questions that might boil up during the final weeks. Melon-sized brains like those belonging to Derry Irvine and Charlie Falconer were employed with the specific task of pinning us down on the loose ends and the difficult questions that arose as those ends were unpicked.

Cameron needs some Melons!

As my diaries record, there were some pretty bruising debates and exchanges along the way as we sought to resolve difficult political, policy and personnel issues. But it was far better to have that than to risk sudden explosions to our disadvantage during the campaign, as had happened for example in the 1987 and1992 campaigns when unanswered tax and spending tensions flared open under Tory pressure.

The Tories' handling of the Ashcroft issue strikes me as the worst kind of political management - 'turn the other way and hopefully it will go away' . 

Watching interviews with Cameron, Hague, Osborne and many other senior Tories in recent months, I have constantly been thinking - why have they not dealt with this? Why can't they see it is going to become a problem for them, and that the size of the problem will grow as they prevaricate? Then it became fairly clear that either they had asked the right questions, but because they didn't like the answers they decided to go into heads down, 'let's not talk about it 'mode, or they had not asked the right questions at all, out of some fear of Ashcroft and his financial muscle, which is so important to their campaign.

Whichever it is, it has made Ashcroft an issue of Cameron's judgement and Hague's judgement, as well as an issue of their arrogance in thinking this would not become the problem it is becoming.

It will reinforce doubts people have about whether they have what it takes to be effective at the top of government. As I look at David Miliband as Foreign Secretary, at least I have no doubt of his competence and his ability to ask the right questions and keep asking until he gets the answers. I now look at William Hague and think that for all his Northern wit and charm, the poor judgement that put paid to his leadership of his Party has not improved with time, even if his image has. His credibility could take a battering on this. He could also find himself disabled within the campaign itself, meaning more reliance on Cameron and Osborne.

Which might make it Happy Birthday Labour.

** Buy The Blair Years online and raise a few quid to help fight the Ashcroft millions http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

The tributes will focus on Michael Foot the politician, the minister, the leader, the wonderful orator.

They will highlight too his journalism and his writing, and the great causes he supported.

I hope that what also comes through is what a lovely man he was, right to the end of a life so well lived.

The sadness I feel at his death is exacerbated by the fact I was away when Fiona went with Neil Kinnock to see him recently. She  came away sensing he did not have that long to live.

But at least he was still in his own home, the one he shared for so long with his wife Jill Craigie, and still surrounded by his books and his memories.

His friends had worried that he would not really be able to cope after Jill died. They were close, and mutually dependent. She was always the one I thought would live forever. But somehow he was able to continue to pursue his interests and his passions.

He was a very old friend of Fiona's parents, Bob and Audrey Millar, but she and I really got to know him best after he had stopped being Labour leader.

He and Jill invited us over to dinner at their home on the edge of Hampstead Heath regularly, often with the Kinnocks and Salman Rushdie. The author found in the Foots a passionate supporter when 'Satanic Verses' made him the target of such hatred that he required round the clock protection. Michael's home was one of his sanctuaries. Michael was an engaging companion because nothing passed him by, he was well read, on top of every detail of every major debate, full of strong views but also an understanding of the views of others.

On the Old-New Labour-ometer, fair to say that Michael might be placed closer to the old than the new. But he was a phenomenal support. He took as much pride in the three election wins under Tony Blair as anyone and was delighted to celebrate his 90th birthday in 2003 at a party in Downing Street garden surrounded by family and friends from across the political spectrum. And whenever we were under the cosh, Michael would always be on with a word of support, advice or encouragement.

The last time he came to our house for lunch, he was barely able to walk. Yet he sat and gave his views on all the big issues of the day, illustrated by colourful tales of the past. 'Was there really as much division in the Wilson Cabinets as the books suggest?' I asked him. 'Oh far more,' he said.

Whenever we spoke, there were always three regulars in the conversation. First, his determination that we should go to one final Plymouth-Burnley game. Second, if I had a pound for every time he thanked me for helping him get a large cheque from a newspaper which suggested he had been a Russian spy, I'd be a lot wealthier. 'Welcome to the kitchen,' he used to say. 'You helped pay for it.'

Third, and most importantly, his desire that Labour should win another General Election. He did not agree with everything the Labour government did. But he delighted in so much of the change made under first Tony and now Gordon, two men of whom I never heard him say a bad word, even when disagreeing with some of their actions. And to the end, the very end, he would argue with anyone who cared to engage that in the choice between Tory and Labour about who should run Britain, there wasn't really a choice at all.

Even as his health failed, his eyesight virtually gone, his legs weak, he was still able to engage in debate. Last summer Fiona got in touch with him to ask if he would have some time for a 16 year old pupil from a local school. He wanted to discuss George Orwell with Michael for an essay he was writing. Michael invited them both to tea and spent over an hour with the boy in his garden, reminiscing about Orwell and the rise of fascism. When they left he gave the young man one of his precious books. It was typical of Michael, his mind and memory as sharp as ever, gracious and decent to the end.

A confession ... I sometimes find speaking at Labour Party fundraisers a real chore. There, I've said it. Most are fine, some are terrific, but sometimes you're just not in the mood, there is no energy and organisation when you get there and despite doing your best, you sometimes leave a bit deflated. The people at the many events I have done will just have to decide for themselves whether their event was one of those that made me feel like that.

But last night I did one which I left with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. It was at the Thameside theatre in Grays, Essex ('give us a mention love,' one of the lovely women working there said as I left, so there you go.)

The spring in the step was because of the mood among the party supporters who had turned out, and the song because I had shared the bill with something every campaign needs - a Labour-supporting Elvis Presley impersonator.

'The King of Rock meet the King of Spin' had evolved as an idea born on Facebook where Elvis (aka Mark Wright, regular commenter on this blog), Val Morris (wife of the Labour candidate in Thurrock Carl Morris) and I are friends. Elvis not only had the songs and the moves, but he had four wonderful Vegas showgirls too. I felt like a World Title heavyweight boxer being marched into the ring as they escorted me on stage to thumping music. I hope someone took some pictures.

But it was more than the showgirls' high kicks or Mark's superb impersonations of one of the greatest singers of all time that made for a happy night. People who are out campaigning really do feel something is shifting out there. At one point in the q and a, when at times I felt the questions were more rooted in 'when' we win than 'if,' I had to say ... hold on, this is going to be the fight of all fights, and let's not kid ourselves that a few narrowing polls means people can sit back and relax. Far from it.

But it was good to feel that energy and excitement coming back into Labour politics. Someone asked why I thought it was happening. I said I felt there were two reasons, one about us, one about the Tories. The economy was beginning to pick up a little and I think there was a kind of grudging respect for Gordon and Alistair Darling's handling of what was a quite extraordinary crisis. But I felt the other reason, as I have been saying here for ages, was that the public were ahead of the media in asking tough questions of the Tories, who were found wanting.

David Cameron is not going down as well as he did earlier in his leadership. George Osborne has never gone down terribly well with people outside of his own elitist circles. William Hague goes down better than he did when leader, but I suspect he is going to be severely disabled by his connections to the Ashcroft saga. Ken Clarke is quite popular but pretty much invisible. And the rest are largely unknown, as are their plans and policies for the country.

There was also a feeling, expressed to me by a Labour member at the book-signing I did afterwards (we raised several hundred pounds for the party by selling The Blair Years as at http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php ) that people feel GB has been tested, and a lot of the coverage about him way over the top, whereas DC has not really been tested at all. That testing is now under way.

There was a lot of interest in the leaders' TV debates, for which the ground rules have finally been agreed. I said the media expectation seems to be that Cameron will 'win'. That is because he is considered to be a good media performer. But these debates will require substance in greater abundance than style, which is why they may in fact suit GB. They are also a huge bonus for Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg. But the debates are another reason to be excited about the weeks ahead.

Perhaps it was the magic of Elvis that got me going, but I made a prediction that turnout will be considerably up on last time ... partly because people think it will be close, partly because of the debates hopefully engaging more people.

Four per cent of people think Elvis is alive. Last night, via Mark Wright, he was. And close to 100 per cent left the theatre thinking Labour was back in with a chance.

I find myself once again in the position of having to rebut the accusations of my partner. No, this is not some kind of John Terry/Wayne Bridge drama about to unfold before your eyes, but a response to the sheeer volume of items on twitter re my domestic uselessness.

Not satisfied with revealing said DU in her book about working wimmin, Fiona has now gone and done a piece for the Radio Times on the same theme, reciting old stories about me refusing to mow lawns and not knowing how to cook - all true - amid a 'new one' about my deliberate breaking of a Hoover so that she never again asked me to clean.

I know memory plays tricks on people, and this Hoovergate incident took place almost 30 years ago. But I did NOT repeat NOT break the Hoover deliberately, as claimed by her. It genuinely broke down all on its own, on the one occasion when I was using it. There, that is my defence. The fact that she decided to see it as a deliberate act, one which made her decide never to ask me to clean again, is just a small bonus for me, which has served me well for 30 non-dusting, non-Hoovering years.

I am not proud of my DU, and I confess to feeling I may have set a bad example to our sons in particular. But the fact that our daughter seems more naturally disposed to helping Fiona around the house suggests, does it not, a genetic divide overlooked in her otherwise excellent book. (And before the angry comments come in ... tongue is moderately in cheek here)

I have just had a meeting in the Wolseley in central London and was made aware of my domestic failings by, variously, readers of The Guardian, The Telegraph and a few online junkies, so I decided the rebuttal had to be instant. I'm now off to meet Nancy for a cup of tea. What do you mean which Nancy? There is only one Nancy. And like so many other people, she is telling me the mood has changed and Labour can win a fourth term. Plenty said the same at The Wolseley.

'Not been so excited in years,' one guy said to me. I said if we won I would be so happy I would Hoover the whole house, and make sure I didn't break the damned thing.

** Looking forward to performing with Elvis at Thameside Theatre in Grays tonight. Elvis impersonators for Labour ... the mood is good.

*** Buy The Blair Years here and raise cash for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.  

Sketchwriter Matthew Engel gets all the big gigs. He was the one who outed me as a Britney fan when I felt a tap on my shoulder as she shimmied on stage at Wembley, and Mr Engel was there, to say he was 'doing a piece on Britney crowds' and would I like to say what I was doing at one of her concerts? I did wonder myself sometimes, especially once the miming got into full swing.

Yesterday Mr Engel, then of The Guardian, now of the FT, had another performance to cover, and this time the performer was allowing real noise to come from his mouth.

But whilst Britney left thousands of (mainly) young fans screaming in delight, the headline on Mr Engel's account of David Cameron's performance at his spring conference suggests it was not A List stuff: 'Party trick falls flat amid subdued faithful.'

I wasn't there, having spent the morning travelling back from Burnley, Saturday's sad defeat followed by a happy testimonial dinner for Jimmy McIlroy, and the afternoon at the Carling Cup Final watching Fergie win again, having earlier heard Mr Cameron say he was supporting Aston Villa.

But the key point in Mr Engel's piece seems to this. '"I've got to do a speech without any notes," he [Cameron] said. Got to? This was not a novelty act. If he had spent less intellectual energy on memorising the speech, he might have remembered to say something fresh and inspiring. Oh, it was well crafted, and well delivered too. He just didn't have anything to say. And the whole occasion was strangely subdued.'

Subdued, I imagine, because of the shrinking poll lead. Having read a transcript of the speech this morning, I think Mr Cameron was trying to answer the doubts about him that are being raised in focus groups. The main one, raised again and again, is whether he has substance, whether he is more than the super-salesman he sees himself as.

His weakness in the speech seemed to be that he was merely raising the questions people had, rather than giving clear answers to them.

He says he is not complacent and told his Party that he always expected this to be a close fight. I'm not so sure about that. I remember seeing George Osborne shortly after GB took over from TB and my strong sense was of a man who thought with Gordon at the helm, it was game over for the Tories. But they have banked too much on media hostility to Labour, and not enough on the public's ability to care less about what is occupying the Westminster village, and more about decisions that affect their lives.

They are also prepared to recognise GB's workrate and resilience, qualities required of modern leaders. Nobody can say Gordon has not been tested. They want to see Cameron tested too, which is why there is considerable irritation out there at the generally one-sided anti-Labour tone of the media debate. There is also a big opening for Labour in Cameron saying he wants a greater focus on the Labour record, which he intends to 'take apart piece by piece.'

I have been saying for a long time that the three planks of any campaign are record, forward agenda and attacks on opponents. Labour have struggled to get over the scope and scale of the record, and Cameron's intervention provides an opportunity to do so which should be seized.

Cameron does have energy, and the high profile morning runs are designed to underline that. But the big question is not 'can he run down the beach?' but can he run the country, and does he have the clear vision to take Britain in a new direction, and the policies that will make that happen?

The energy question was confirmed in the affirmative yesterday. The bigger questions were not, and therein lies the problem which, according to the FT's main report above the sketch, cast a 'pall' over the conference.

When Britney sang, we knew what to expect, and if we were so minded we could sing along.

When Cameron speaks, some of the individual notes sound fine, but he has yet to write a complete song, and the minute the performance was over, I suspect even the party faithful didn't really know what to hum as they left the hall. 

*** With the game most definitely on, raise money for Labour by buying individually signed copies of The Blair Years at http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

With the Tories doing enough damage on their own, and the polls continuing to narrow as they happily  ignore all the free advice I give them here, I thought I'd do a rare blog free of Tory bashing.

Instead a return to two of my favourite themes - the UK media's refusal to accept that good news can be news at all, and the great success story I have always believed London 2012 will be.

Consider this - if a report by the National Audit Office had said last week that preparations for the London Olympics were behind schedule and costing way more than planned, do you think you might have heard about it?

So why, when the NAO issued a report saying the preparations were on schedule and on budget, is this deemed worthy of no coverage whatsoever?

Well, I say none with apologies to the FT editor who decided it was worth one paragraph highlighting what the report said about future challenges of co-ordination, and the BBC London team who gave it what it called a 'wipe' - one sentence.

The media are constantly in hand-wringing mode as to why they are in such a mess. The belief that 'good news is no news' is one of the reasons.

It comes to something when I can write this a few days after the event and virtually claim what papers are fond of calling a 'world exclusive' in setting out some of the report's findings.

We can start with the opening line of the NAO's ignored press release.

'Venues and infrastructure for 2012 are on track to be delivered on time for the Games and the cost is currently forecast to be within budget, according to a  progress report to Parliament by the National Audit Office'.

It is worth pointing out that this report comes not from government or London 2012 but Parliament's independent watchdog. To get this sort of endorsement is the holy grail for a project like this.

Now think back to the huge media cynicism, first that we would never beat Paris for the Games and, when we won, that we couldn't deliver a project on this scale.

An Olympic Games obviously presents the ultimate fixed deadline. Worth remembering too that the completion dates are not summer 2012 but in the most part summer 2011 so our athletes can get a chance to use the facilities in advance and the organisers can hold test events - so on time means in reality a year early.

As the Winter Olympics close this weekend, there are now fewer than 1000 days to go. When I was asked on the radio the other day for my favourite view in London, I said currently it was the sight of the Olympic stadium rising up.

The Games present the biggest construction project in Europe - at a cost of £8bn with 10,000 people working at Stratford and thousands more in companies up and down the country. It represents a remarkable logistical challenge to manage multiple contractors on one very constrained site in East London. It is  changing the nature of the construction industry by setting new standards for sustainability which are attracting global interest. And it is being done with an exemplary health and safety record.

I am an unashamed cheerleader for a Games whose legacy will not just  be a regenerated East London and a great sports legacy but UK plc winning billions of pounds of contracts abroad on the back of this success at home.

It is also turning into a proud symbol of the best of Britain  - multiculturalism, innovation, optimism, volunteering.

If only we had a media that could see it this would be an even better country than it already is.

Ps. Oh ok, just a bit of Tory-bashing. Well not bashing so much as strategic reflection. It comes to you in the form of the email I sent to Kate Silverton's Five Live programme when she asked for questions for David Cameron.

I asked 'does he recall a conversation we had at Matthew Freud's party two years ago? He was well ahead in the polls. I said unless he came up with a thought through policy programme which showed real change in his party his lead was unsustainable even if Labour became less popular. He said he was far from complacent but he believed he was doing what we did under TB - presenting well, building media support and keeping powder dry. I pointed out TB led a fundamental overhaul of the party - strategy, policy, constitution. He needed a similar scale of change.... He hasn't done it and despite a benign environment he is now paying a political price.'

*** Buy The Blair Years online and raise money for Labour (a political price worth paying) http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

Every so often someone sends you one of those 'you must see this' video clips which you're really glad you didn't immediately consign to the electronic dustbin.  One such arrived in my inbox yesterday, and though eight minutes is a long time to be taking a punt on someone's assumptions about how I like to spend my time, this was worth every second.

I tried it on my daughter, who is studying the Second World War at the moment for a school play she is involved in, and she too was blown away by it. I have added it below so that visitors here can see if they share our enthusiasm, and that of the person who sent it to.

I must admit, I never imagined I would be blogging on the winner of 'Ukraine's Got Talent' but it really is a fabulous piece of live art. It shows a young woman, Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures with her fingers on an illuminated sand table. Bear with me.

It is mesmerising. She 'paints' pictures that tell the story of how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000. I have to say I would put her ahead of any act I ever saw on the British or American 'Got Talent' versions.

She begins with a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears. 
She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside as a man stands outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in an estimated one in four of the population being killed.

Kseniya Simonova says: "I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me.' No it's not. She is brilliant. You will see panellists and audience members reduced to tears as she paints these different scenes. I hope you appreciate it as much as I did, and enjoy the fact that I've got through a whole blog without mentioning that the Tories don't have a thought through policy programme for Britain. Oh damn, it just sneaked in at the end.

Enjoy the winner of Ukraine's Got Talent. She really has.

*** Buy The Blair Years online and raise money for Labour (Labour's got talent too) http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

In a piece for The Times earlier this week, about how social networking was changing the way many people consume media and interact with the political debate, I referred to the TV debates between the party leaders, which will be a genuinely new development in the forthcoming campaign.

I said the relative spending power of the parties, so far as the debates were concerned, would be irrelevant. So would the millions of words of hype. All that mattered was the performance of the leaders and the reactions of the public watching live, then talking to each other.

If I may add a few more words to the hype, I would like to draw attention to the Telegraph's coverage of its own poll today.

The state of the parties standing confirms the recent narrowing of the gap between the Tories and Labour. But it is a reference to the TV debates that interests me. I quote here not from the paper itself but from Labour's media monitoring department's account of it in their report on the morning papers. 'Despite an advertising blitz, an attempted Labour coup to remove the PM & the desperate state of the economy Labour has managed to close the gap. Conservative strategists hope that the turmoil created by allegations of bullying against GB coupled with Darling's unexpectedly forthright attack on the PM will have a beneficial impact in the polls over the coming days. The poll, which was conducted this week, suggests that there was no immediate effect from the bullying accusations. Cameron will also take comfort from the news that 60% of voters believe the television election debates will play an important part in helping them decide which way to vote. The Conservative leader is widely expected to perform the best in the first ever British general election debates. 53% think Cameron will gain most public support as a result of the three live broadcasts, compared to 20% for GB & 12% Clegg.'

I highlight the words 'Cameron will also take comfort' to underline the widespread media expectation, underlined by the figures in the poll, that the Tory leader will outperform GB in these debates, which today's survey, rightly I think, suggests will be an important factor in determining the final election outcome.

I suppose it gives us some inkling of the volume of hype the debates will generate that pollsters are asking for views on who will win this far off.

But the 'Cameron sure to win' mindset could turn out to be a problem for him. It is generally acknowledged that he is a better communicator than many of his predecessors, like Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard. That would not be hard. It is also widely acknowledged - not least by GB - that the Prime Minister is not totally at ease with all the realities of operating in topflight politics in the media age.

But these debates will be more than a sparring of soundbites. They will require substance, policy detail, and real arguments about the future direction of the country. And that combination may well play to GB's strengths rather than DC's. The events are also a huge bonus for Nick Clegg, who remains little known outside those who follow closely the ins and outs of the political debate.

So far from taking comfort from the expectations on the debates, I think Team Dave should worry about them. One of the reasons the poll gap has narrowed is that people are beginning to think there is not much substance to the Tory leader, and not much depth to his team. A polished performance, from a pure communications perspective, will not on its own help him in the debates. Indeed it could exacerbate the sense that PR is all he really cares about, and that he lacks the sense of mission for the country that a would-be PM must have.

Elsewhere in the polling jungle today, a survey of Tory members shows them urging a rightward lurch focusing on immigration, as the hopeless Howard campaign did last time. This survey too is good news for Labour. It shows up another of the reasons why Cameron has stalled - he talks a lot about how the Party has changed, but scratch beneath the surface a little, and it's pretty much the same old Tory Party.

And more cheering survey fare from The Times which reports on a poll of 100 Tory candidates in winnable seats who named Mrs Thatcher as the runaway first choice as political hero, ahead of Sir Winston Churchill. William Wilberforce and Benjamin Disraeli. Thatcher's world view is also evident when likely new MPs are asked about the European Union. Two candidates nominated Cameron as their political hero, whilst five named William Hague, including one whose admiration did not extend to knowing how to spell his name.

All in all, rather a cheering media monitoring report this morning. And in the FT, the one actual paper I've read, nice to see the word 'wibbly-wobbliness' entering the language, from the lips of Peter Mandelson, on the subject of Mr Cameron.

A call from the lady who might be termed my common law mother-in-law this morning, Audrey, who is aware of my aversion to listening to the news in the morning, and therefore acts as an occasional voluntary media monitoring service.

She often calls to tell me what people have said about me, always delighting in delivering mild expletives about critics, and warm words of support for supporters. She is as tribal as they come.

There were two stories she thought I might find interesting this morning, both of which she had heard on LBC. The first concerned David Cameron, who wants to be Prime Minister. The second concerned Clarke Carlisle, who wants Burnley to beat Portsmouth on Saturday, because he is our centre back.

He was in the news however, for something very different, namely his triumph yesterday when he fulfilled a lifelong ambition by being a contestant on Countdown.

Audrey is not yet on Twitter - give it time - so was unaware that I had tweeted about Clarke's win yesterday. Then having seen the volume of traffic on Twitter about him, and all the texts I got, I thought I should take a look to see if he was as good as everyone was saying. He was. Not just good with the numbers and even better with the words, but polite and charming, and everything Premier League footballers are reckoned not to be.

When I was on Alan Titchmarsh's programme recently, amid the John Terry/Ashley Cole fandangoes, I tried to mount a defence of footballers, saying that they were not all bad and the majority were actually decent characters who just happened to be good at football during the era it became a global multi-billion dollar sport.

The 'thick footballer' image is fairly well out there. But Clarke has gone a fair way to correcting it. I texted him last night to say that 'Burnley player wins Countdown' was running as the seventh most viewed story on the BBC website, ahead of the Westminster bubble's latest mini frenzy about GB and Alistair Darling. As was obvious on the programme yesterday, he was a proud and happy man. Equally happy will be Channel 4 who will doubtless have a boost in ratings as Clarke defends his title today.

As for the Cameron story which tickled Audrey's fancy, it was the revelation that he was a bit of a dunce when he was at Heatherdown prep school in his pre-Eton days. Bottom in Latin and Maths. Second bottom in Geography and French. Worst overall performer in his class by the year-end.

The poor Maths performance obviously explains why he and George cannot come up with an economic policy that withstands more than two minutes scrutiny. His woeful record on Geography and French is perhaps the reason why he has devised a policy on Europe that would take us to the exit door of the European Union. And bottom in Latin? ... no wonder he is so jealous of Boris.

Anyway, Audrey thought I would be tickled by the thought that Burnley players are cleverer than the man who would be PM. I kind of knew it of Clarke anyway, but it is good to have it confirmed.

*** Buy The Blair Years online and raise money for Labour (yesterday's Electoral Commission report underlined once more the uphill battle against the Tories' spending power) http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

When The Guardian reported last year on the scale of alleged phone-hacking by the News of the World under then editor Andy Coulson, there was considerable broadcast media coverage, but within 24 hours, it all went fairly quiet. A print media normally keen to fuel any high octane frenzy (recent events concerning the so-called bullying row give a good example of that) decided this one was not really for them.

That may well be because, just as it was always doubtful that the News of the World's jailed Royal reporter Clive Goodman was alone at the paper in knowing what was going on, so it is doubtful that News International was alone among newspaper groups in hiring private detectives licensed, in the eyes of the press at least, to break the law.

The latest Parliamentary report into the issue confirms suspicions that the phone-hacking practice was more widespread than has been admitted, that knowledge of it went beyond one reporter and one private detective, and that News International have gone to considerable lengths, and cost, to ensure the full story is not exposed to the kind of public gaze they expect for other parts of our national life.

Phrases like ‘collective amnesia ... deliberate obfuscation ... conceal the truth ...'  suggestions that the real scale of the scandal ‘will never be known' because the silence of key players was ‘effectively bought,' the view that it is ‘inconceivable' that Mr Goodman was the  lone ‘rogue reporter' claimed by News, the criticisms of the lack of rigorous inquiry, not just by News but also by the police and the Press Complaints Commission, combine to make the Culture Committee report about as scathing as they come, with serious questions not just for Rupert Murdoch's executives, but also for the police and the PCC.

But it is Mr Coulson's role that takes this more directly to the political and electoral arena. He was editor of the News of the World back then, but is communications director for David Cameron now.

Just as Mr Cameron commands considerable press support, so does Mr Coulson, which is why even though the media has recently been dominated by the issue of bullying, there has been scant reference to his role in the record payout for a bullying case, which also happened on his watch and where he was more directly implicated. It is evidence of Mr Cameron's confidence that the media is basically on his side that he could intervene in the ‘bullying' debate without any sense of embarrassment that the man writing his scripts was accused by a tribunal of presiding over a culture of bullying which led one former employee of his to be awarded £800,000. When a woman from a helpline makes vague and changing claims of bullying inside Number 10, Mr Cameron calls for an inquiry. Mr Coulson's bullying, by contrast, he sees as being acceptable enough for him to be his right-hand man.

But despite the blackout on his role in much of the press, it may be that Mr Coulson may yet become a bigger issue than he and much of the media would like. Because his centrality in Mr Cameron's bid to become Prime Minister is an issue of the Tory leader's judgement and modus operandi as much as it is an issue of what Mr Coulson did as a newspaper editor.

The Tories are currently struggling to work out why the polls have narrowed. It strikes me as being fairly obvious. For a considerable proportion of Mr Cameron's leadership, he has escaped serious scrutiny. He continues in many parts of the media to do so. But the public want more from a would be Prime Minister than to be told that it is time for a change and to be told by newspapers that they should vote for him. So they are looking more closely, and they are not as impressed as the papers by what they see. They are ahead of the press in asking tough questions of Mr Cameron, and in seeing through the thin and ever changing policy platform.

I know that Mr Cameron thinks that the Ashcroft funding issue is not being talked about in the pubs and factories, and so is unlikely to damage his campaign. He will probably think the same about Mr Coulson.

But these are exactly the kind of issues that can explode, a bit like the bullying row did, during a campaign, particularly if, as is the case with the Tories, a Party does not have a clear, consistent and thought through policy agenda to promote. 

When The Guardian last reported on these issues, the Tories were well ahead in the polls, and within a day the sense out there was that nobody much cared. I reckon they'll care a bit more now. The election is nearer, the economy is improving a little, the polls are closer and the mood inside Tory HQ is not as cheery as it ought to be for a Party that until recently thought it was home and dry.

* An edited version of this appears in today's Guardian

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I thought David Steel was rather good on Newsnight last night. I was half asleep, if woken by the shouting match between JP and Andrew Rawnsley, but Steel's main point seemed to be a lament that this is the kind of thing that now dominates political debate.

There is always a danger, once you hit the back nine of life, as I did a few years ago, of old fartism setting in, sufficient to make you imagine things were different and better 'back in my day.'

But, thinking back to the time I was a journalist covering Steel as leader of the Liberal Party, and his fellow panellist Roy Hattersley as deputy leader of the Labour Party, I don't think my memory is playing tricks in recalling that debates really were much more about policy.

Yes, it is true that his predecessor Jeremy Thorpe's career and legacy were destroyed by a sex scandal, and that personality issues between Steel and David Owen were the source of considerable strain and media comment, culminating in the Spitting Image depiction of Steel as a puppet inside Owen's pocket.  It is also true that 'tabloid tales' were always there or thereabouts, though the difference is that the divisions between tabloids, broadsheets and broadcast media as to what constitutes a 'story' are pretty much gone now.True too that with the Cold War forming the geopolitical backdrop to politics in most democracies, the differences between the parties back then were perhaps greater than now.

None of that negates the central notion that policy debates do tend more quickly to get drowned out now if a personality issue comes along. And whilst Steel mentioned changes at PMQs as being partly responsible, so is the changed nature of the media landscape.

There is not much point raging at Andrew Rawnsley for writing a book. He is a journalist not a politician, albeit for a paper that likes to put itself on the side of the progressives; and his book having been written, it would be odd to expect him not to want to promote it.

Hattersley also had quite an interesting take - that he had no evidence of the kind of behaviour GB is accused of, but felt that even if he did have what were being called 'temper tantrums', it did not make him any less fit to do his job. Steel echoed the point in what I thought was rather a good overall defence of the prime minister.

It also seems to me - and this often happens when a frenzy kicks off - that as emotions rise and positions harden, some fairly obvious truths get lost.

That GB is capable of getting angry is no secret to anyone who has worked with him down the years. I have seen him in a rage with TB, with JP, with Peter Mandelson, with me, with others. But I have never seen him grab staff by the lapels, hit anyone or throw inanimate objects around the place, which is the general impression created in recent days, especially since Mrs Pratt from the bullying helpline got involved, even if she has since said none of the alleged complaints from Number 10 concerned GB.

I have also seen GB be charming and funny. Above all I have seen him, in many different situations, be driven and determined and passionate about his beliefs and the policies he thinks Britain needs to embrace.

We are all complicated people, every single one of us, and as with any other high profile figure, there are many different aspects to GB's character. As he said himself at the weekend, he is not perfect. Nobody is. He is strong-willed, impatient, can be grumpy, and could do with chilling out a bit more from time to time.

But having seen him and other leaders up close, I am in no doubt he is a better leader for this country, particularly in times like these, than David Cameron would be. Indeed, the last 48 hours, and the Tory leader's handling of the issue, has made me more not less convinced about that. There is something pretty shameful about the extent to which Cameron's Tories want to make the debate about anything but serious, thought through policies to which they might stick for more than a day or two.

GB won't be enjoying the current brouhaha, which is why the Tories and a media which has invested too much in saying he has to go, are driving it for all it's worth.

But he has seen off far worse than this and can be confident that when the debate does return to policy, which it will, his strengths and Cameron's weaknesses -  the likeliest reasons for recent narrowing of the polls - will be back on parade.

*** Buy The Blair Years online and raise cash for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

Interesting moment at BBC London - I was there to be interviewed by Robert Elms about my book and my views on matters London - when the 'news' was announced that David Cameron had 'called for an inquiry' into GB and bullying.

Interesting because of the rolling eyes and the 'inquiry into what?' shouts from those who heard this 'news'.

There is always a moment in media frenzies when the media knows that it is reporting a frenzy but can't do much to stop it(self). . This was that moment. It said as much about Cameron as it did about GB.

As he clearly has nothing better to do with his time, Cameron could perhaps draw up the terms of reference for the inquiry, and maybe give some indication as to how much public money he thinks should be spent on it. Then realise he was wasting his breath, and making himself look silly in the meantime.

Rule 1. Only call for resignations if you think there really should be resignations. Variant on the rule - only call for inquiries if you really think there should be one.

Of course the Andrew Rawnsley book, and the resultant mini frenzy, is meat and drink to the Tories not for what it says about Gordon but because it removes the threat they fear most - the prospect that policy might be on the politico-media agenda.

There were two ways for Team Dave to approach today. He could have said ... well there goes GB in a bit of a pother about this Rawnsley book, and that Pratt woman has rather helped push it along in our direction so let's leave it and instead I'll go out and say something about the economy, or public services, maybe outline one or two things I would do if I was Prime Minister.

Or he could 'call for an inquiry.'

Pathetic really.

The Tories seemingly can't work out why the polls are closing.

It is because people are starting to look at them more closely, and realise what a second-rate bunch they are.

Doubtless Andy Coulson was at Dave's right hand as this 'strategy' was put together. That would be the same Coulson whose bullying culture at the News of the World led to the biggest tribunal payout on record. No calls for an inquiry then, eh Dave?

*** Buy The Blair Years online and raise money for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

There is some fantastic stuff in The Observer today. As I am heading to Villa to see Burnley later today, forgive me if I am a bit rushed and so only point out four things.

1. is the final paragraph of the lead story. I will quote it - the final paragraph that is - in full. 'A YouGov poll published today by the Sunday Times, meanwhile, reveals that the gap between Labour and the Conservatives has shrunk to just six points - the closest position in more than a year.' (What did I say yesterday about the Tories wobbling if they go beneath 40 per cent? ... you watch)

2. is on page 32, a piece headlined 'The weekend Brown saved the banks from the abyss', with a sub-heading 'The prime minister's qualities were to the fore on the weekend in October 2008 when financial calamity was so close.'

Methinks 1 and 2 may be linked.

3. is an interview with Alex Ferguson on the sports pages, particularly enjoyable for the enthusiasm he continues to show for the game, and in particular the joy he gets from helping turn Wayne Rooney into a world-class player. It's a pity the interviewer didn't get Fergie going on politics. Had he done so, he would have heard the views of a man who is convinced Labour not only can but will win the next election, not least because young people in particular see little in David Cameron to relate to.

Which brings me to 4, the main cartoon on page 37, 'Riddell's view.' As many of the nation's cartoonists know, I am something of a sucker for good political cartoons, not least for the funds they can raise for party and charity, as well as the joy they can bring to a toilet or a landing wall.

Today's has a pot-bellied Cameron playing darts - he 'confessed' to a love of darts in a recent interview, in which he also cited cans of Guinness as one of the great inventions of our time. The speech bubble has him saying 'I say, Jeeves, open me another can of Guinness, there's a good fellow...'

In the foreground, meanwhile, which we assume to be Jeeves's quarters, is a box marked 'fragile' with 'Tory policies' in it, a Maggie handbag, a portrait of a swivel-eyed Cameron older generation lookalike, and an axe. Subtle it ain't. But telling it most certainly is.

For all I know, Cameron likes to chuck the odd arrow, and likes to down the odd can of Guinness. But whereas there is an argument that the country might like to know a little more about GB the man, given we know an awful lot about GB the policy-obsessed politician, I wonder if Team Dave might reflect on whether we need to know a little less about Cameron's pastimes and habits, and a little more about what he would be if elected. I enjoyed darts commentator Sid Waddell's rebuff of Dave's professed admiration for him.

Just as his airbrushed posters missed the public mood, so do his continuing efforts to portray himself as an ordinary kind of guy. The more he tries to conceal his silver spoon background, the more he will open the door for it to become an issue. I for one felt Labour got far too defensive in the wake of the Tories and their media friends crying 'class war' when GB suggested Tory policies on inheritance tax and non-doms were dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton.

Nobody is saying that going to Eton disqualifies someone from being PM, any more than an education at Fettes disqualified TB from becoming a Labour leader and PM. But when your background and upbringing so clearly dictate your policy agenda - and the inheritance tax cut for 3000 of his closest friends is the best example of that - then it becomes an issue.

It is interesting that on the weekend The Observer is providing plenty of cartoon material from its coverage of GB,  the resident satirist should be focusing on Dave's efforts at getting down with the hoi polloi.

*** Buy The Blair Years and raise cash for Labour. http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bokshop.php.

Good speech by GB, good interview by Douglas Alexander in The Guardian, and a few more narrowing polls may well see Tory jitters becoming a fullscale wobble.

The pundits are being pretty dismissive of 'a future fair for all' as a slogan, on the grounds that it is a bit same old same old. On one level they're right - back in 1997 'future not the past' and 'many not the few' were central to Labour's fight.

But the consistency of 'a future fair for all' is among its strengths. It underlines Labour's enduring values. It allows scope to draw attention to the Tories' enduring values - in particular 'few not the many' policies like inheritance tax cuts for Dave and George's 3000 closest mates. And it reminds people this election, like all elections, is about the future.

If Labour can win the argument about the kind of future Britain needs - especially in relation to 'securing the economic recovery' and creating the jobs of the future - and can win the argument on fairness, the closing of the gap will continue.

The Tories really should be doing so much better, and must be getting worried as to why they're not. An economy that has gone through a period of genuine crisis. Politics dominated by expenses. A current war becoming more unpopular and a recent unpopular war returning to the centre of the political debate. A tame media that fails to pursue them on difficult questions. A huge spending imbalance in their favour which is allowing them to put up expensive posters all over Britain, and fire millions of letters to voters in marginal seats.

Yet as their spending has increased, their lead has not increased with it.

Douglas was right, in his Guardian interview, to point out that the Tories are fighting a TV campaign in a more networked age. Right too that the lesson from Barack Obama's use of the internet is about building on the most trusted form of political communication - word of mouth. People believe and trust both politicians and media less than they did. They believe each other more. It means face to face campaigning, and its online modern equivalent, matter more than ever.

GB seemed comfortable with the message he put to his audience of party activists today. That is important, because the main message carriers have to be at ease with what they're saying. As Douglas points out in The Guardian, Cameron is 'caught between his branding and his beliefs.'

For a large part of his term as leader, Cameron has had a free run from the media. The public however have started to look at him more closely, and have been less impressed than his media supporters suggest they should be.

It all means that though Labour remain the underdog, there is a fight on now. When Andrew Rawnsley was putting the finishing touches to his book, out soon, 'The End of the Party' seemed a fair enough title as Labour limped towards oblivion.

There will be some who think it is the title, rather than Labour, that looks a bit outdated as the serialisation starts tomorrow.

 *** Buy books and raise cash for Labour. http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

'Preying on young children before they have wised up to what is being sold to them isn't right.' So says David Cameron on the issue of 'sexualising' of children through marketing and advertising. Hear hear.

But delete 'young chldren' in the opening sentence above, insert 'the electorate', and we have DC's Tories in a nutshell. I have started a new game, asking people I meet to name a Tory policy. Some of the answers are below ...

Movie industry marketing men, provided they had an A list cast and a big advertising budget, were once guaranteed a minimum of three days' major takings at the box office.

The sheer weight of such a campaign would guarantee busy cinemas on the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday of release. Through the week, word of mouth would then help dictate takings for the next weekend. Two weekends of large takings heralded a success. A big dip between the two meant the film was in trouble.

Now however, according to a communications colleague who works in film PR, there is only one guaranteed pay day, the first Friday. The change is largely down to social networking sites which allow instant and, when communicated en masse, very powerful judgements to be made. 'If people come out of a film on a Friday night and say on twitter or Facebook in big numbers that they hated it, it's dead,' says my colleague. 'If they love it, we know we have a hit.'

It is the most human of reactions, as familiar to centuries old village squares as today's ‘water cooler' equivalents - you see something, you want to tell friends what you thought. So on leaving Nine - early - I tweeted that I got as far as Three. In leaving Invictus, I tweeted that I didn't care about all the snotty reviews, I loved it. And when I wandered online to see if I was alone, on both films I discovered I was not.

There are lessons in this for politics. One of the unexpected consequences of the media age and the digital revolution has been to give people the power to shape their own media landscape, and to shape it with others. Barack Obama's use of the web in his campaign to become US President is sometimes misunderstood. It is true that he used it to raise huge sums in small amounts. Every bit as important, he used it to create a mood, to help turn sympathisers into supporters, supporters into activists, then galvanise and empower those activists to run their own events and mini-campaigns under his strategic umbrella.

This shift was brought home to me at the Labour fundraiser in Lancashire I mentioned recently where a student activist told me she came from a non-political family, and had largely unpolitical friends, but she was confident most would vote Labour 'because every time I see them, I give them a reason to.' That is the campaign mindset required for today. It is virtually impossible for Labour to get media coverage for success stories in public services. The mainstream media just aren't interested. So people are posting their own, and sharing them. Similarly, campaign materials, strategic planning documents and policy handbooks which were once closely guarded at the centre are likely to be posted online for networks within networks to use as they want.

These are changes which benefit Labour and the Lib Dems, bereft as they are of the kind of money available to David Cameron's Tory Party with backing from Lord Ashcroft and other wealthy donors. How the parties adapt to these changes won't necessarily mean the difference between winning and losing. But it will help.

 *** Buy books and raise cash for Labour. Go to http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. Half of money raised in online sales of The Blair Years, individually signed by AC, goes to the Labour Party.

It is as a statement of fact, rather than with any pride, that I confess to a certain phobia about online shopping.

True, I am not that big a shopper anyway, and tend to come out in something of a rash on my annual supermarket visit, on the second day of our summer holiday. But the online variety brings out in me even greater anxiety and purchasophobia.

We did have something of a minor celebration in the house recently when I successfully booked my own train tickets online. Well, I kind of did. I used the traintracker service to find out which trains I wanted, but when it came to the actual purchase I got on the phone and had a nice chat with a man in Bangalore who took down my credit card details.

But my latest experience of the online shopping market has been as a seller rather than a purchaser, and it has been a fascinating experience, not least for the politeness of people when they are served properly.

A fair proportion of online chatter is of the abusive and insulting variety. Feed in any footballer or showbiz celebrity's name, let alone a politician or a banker, and you will see what I mean. So much of our media discourse also operates only at the level of fury and rage.

And I sense from the response to the service we have been running that people have a lot of bad experiences of shopping online. Because the response has been characterised by an extraordinary politesse and thankfulness that something is ordered, paid for, and arrives as promised within a day or two. I'd love to know whether this really is out of the ordinary, but it has been nice to get the emails, tweets, direct messages and letters thanking us simply for doing what we said we would.

We have a good little system going here. My son monitors the site overnight, grabs me at some point in the day to sign any books that need signing, with the message as directed, then he gets them out the next day. I'm glad it seems to be working, and raising a bit of money for the party as we go.

Remember, it is the trade paperback of The Blair Years we are selling, at £15, with £7.50 going to the party. Go to http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

Meanwhile, feel free to share online shopping horror stories or otherwise.

So the Tories' New Big Idea (NBI) is the Co-op. They say.

Interesting though that the Newsnight report on the NBI  used as part of its explanation a film report  showing where Labour already does it, and some old shots of Dave making a speech saying much the same thing as he was setting out as the NBI in front of some nice new posters yesterday.

In the old footage he was wearing a poppy, as was Iain Duncan Smith (the renowned Tory explorer who has seemingly made the incredible in-touch discovery of inner city poverty, and the link between sport and health). So it was some time in late October or early November.

After the film there was a discussion between a right-wing think tank person who needs to wash his hair and a left-wing think tank person with a polo neck sweater and a nice manner.

At the end of the programme I was none the wiser as to what the NBI really is.

But it must be great to have the media so in your thrall that you just have to say something is the equivalent of Maggie's council house sales and, even when it isn't, you get lots of coverage for it.

There are so many unanswered questions to his latest NBI that had it been a Labour NBI, ministers would be run ragged trying to fill in the holes.

You watch though. He'll have another NBI soon. It'll be the equivalent of the Big Bang privatisation programme. For at least two bulletins anyway.

In the absence of thought through policies that stand up to scrutiny it is nice to see he is still coming up with new posters as a way of spending some of Ashcroft's dosh. Even nicer to see 'I've never voted Tory before' trending on twitter with hundreds of reasons not to vote Tory.

Yesterday was another one.

*** Buy books and raise cash for Labour. Go to http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. Half of money raised in online sales of The Blair Years, individually signed by AC, goes to the Labour Party.

As expected, fairly mixed reviews for the GB interview with Piers Morgan. Some can't get beyond their loathing of Piers. Others can't get beyond their negativity about GB. But it is always important to differentiate between media opinion and public opinion. Based on nothing more than instinct, a few conversations and a trawl online, I would say media opinion is somewhere between lukewarm and negative, public opinion between lukewarm and warm.

One of the reasons for the media negativity is frustration at their inability to shape the reaction to an event like this. I made a point of tracking twitter, and some of the message boards, as the interview was going out. In a way, the advance hype, and the media commentary afterwards, don't really matter. The hype probably helps with ratings, which suits both Piers/ITV and, provided it goes well, GB too. The aftermath commentary is less significant, because the opinions that matter are those of viewers, reacting in real time as the thing is broadcast.

Twitter in particular has changed the balance of power in the relationship between 'expert' and 'people.' I don't know how many people were watching last night, nor how many were tweeting as they did so, but when I saw the tweet 'why the fuck is Piers Morgan trending on twitter?' I realised the answers were respectively ... a lot, and quite a few.

Piers is one of those people who provokes strong reactions anyway, but it is also possible to detect in some of the media commentary today a certain jealousy - how many political pundits would love to get the kind of attention for an interview with GB that Piers managed to get? Answer, all of them.

Piers has taken a bit of a kicking for being so obviously friendly to the PM, but it was in fact very close to his usual interviewing style. It was in both his and Gordon's interests for a different side to GB to be shown, and that certainly emerged. Gordon is never going to be the touchiest-feeliest politician on the planet, but it does him no harm at all for people to be reminded that beneath the politician's image is a human being with a backstory made up of the usual mix of good and bad, low and high, tragic and joyous.

I think if there is any lasting impact from the interview it is that in the conversation it has generated, people will at least think that conversation has more than the single 'GB bad' dimension so much of the media has been putting over in recent months.

It has helped clear the air a bit for Gordon, at a time people are finally realising the choice is not GB or TB, or GB or perfection, but GB or David Cameron who, under the slightest pressure, is beginning to look a bit flaky.

A few weeks ago, the Tories saw the leaders' debates, for example, as a guaranteed win-win-win for DC. I'm not sure they are feeling quite so confident now. When it comes to the debates, GB will of course be more on the political than the personal. But the revealing of the more personal last night may mean that some are more willing to listen to the political than they were a few days ago. The mood is changing, in all sorts of ways.

 *** Buy books and raise cash for Labour. Go to http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. Half of money raised in online sales of The Blair Years, individually signed by AC, goes to the Labour Party

First of all, thank you to everyone who has sent me Valentine's Day messages and cards on Facebook. As I tweeted earlier this morning, it must be all the nice press I get that makes me so popular and loved.

So what can I give in return? Answer ... the lyrics, first in French and then my amateur English translation, of one of the greatest love songs ever written (IMHO) - namely Quand on n'a que l'amour, by the francophone world's greatest ever singer (IMHO2), Jacques Brel.

To those poor people who have never heard Brel sing, I strongly urge you to take a little Valentine's Day venture around Youtube. His best known song, Ne Me Quitte Pas, is a bit too sad for Valentine's Day, so I've gone for this one, which I have also picked as the song I would like to leave to my kids as my 'inheritance track' on Radio 4, and which I also want played at my funeral, hopefully not too soon.

When I did a programme for the BBC on Brel a while back, I learned that he wrote this whilst taking part in a conference on the economy! Hence the message, that if all we had was love, the world would be a better place.

Enjoy ...

Quand on n'a que l'amour, A s'offrir en partage
Au jour du grand voyage, Qu'est notre grand amour

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Mon amour toi et moi
Pour qu'éclatent de joie, Chaque heure et chaque jour

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Pour vivre nos promesses
Sans nulle autre richesse, Que d'y croire toujours

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Pour meubler de merveilles
Et couvrir de soleil, La laideur des faubourgs

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Pour unique raison
Pour unique chanson, Et unique secours

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Pour habiller matin
Pauvres et malandrins, De manteaux de velours

Quand on n'a que l'amour, A offrir en prière
Pour les maux de la terre, En simple troubadour

Quand on n'a que l'amour, A offrir à ceux-là
Dont l'unique combat, Est de chercher le jour

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Pour tracer un chemin
Et forcer le destin, A chaque carrefour

Quand on n'a que l'amour, Pour parler aux canons
Et rien qu'une chanson, Pour convaincre un tambour

Alors sans avoir rien, Que la force d'aimer
Nous aurons dans nos mains, Amis, le monde entier

And here is my go at a translation of one of the most untranslateable (because so brilliant) writers around

When we have only love, to offer each other for sharing

On the day of the great journey, that is our great love

When we have only love, my love, you and me,

To erupt in joy, every hour, every day

When we have only love, to live out our promises,

Without any other wealth, than to believe in it always 

When we have only love, to furnish with marvels

And cover with sun, the ugliness of the suburbs

When we only have love, as our only reason

As our only song, as our only help

When we have only love, to dress in the morning

The poor and the little bandits, in velvet coats

When we only have love, to offer in prayer

For the bad things on earth, as a simple troubador 
When we only have love, to offer to those

Whose sole fight is to look for the day

When we have only love, to trace a path,

And force the destiny at each crossroad

When we have only love, to speak to the cannons

And nothing more than a song to convince a drummer
Then, without having anything but the strength to love

We will have in our hands, friends of all the world.

.... If something is lost in the translation, all the more reason to go and find him singing the real thing. As Mel Smith said when I interviewed him about Brel, he doesn't speak any French but when he sees him sing, he knows what he's on about. Happy Valentine's Day.

*** Buy books and raise cash for Labour. Go to http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. Half of money raised in online sales of The Blair Years, individually signed by AC, goes to the Labour Party

With Burnley out of the Cup, a spare Saturday has emerged which has allowed my book publicist to crowbar in a bit more culture, and book-plugging.

As I am more Radio 5 than Radio 4, especially on Saturdays, I have never listened to Loose Ends, so any tips welcome. We record soon.

I am less worried about the mickey-taking Clive Anderson than the charms of Emma Freud, who is on that short list of people who could make me do just about anything. Like when I said no, no and no again to doing the Comic Relief version of The Apprentice, and Emma called round with sweets and chocolates, coinciding her arrival with the return of my daughter and her friends from school. Together they talked me into it.

Which brings me to Piers Morgan. If you want to know why, google me, him and The Apprentice and enjoy seeing him get 'fired' when it came to a shoot out between the two of us.

Piers has been getting lots of coverage for his interview with GB but in my experience all that matters is the actual reaction of people who watch the whole interview.

It is happening at a good time for GB. Finally, he is getting some of the credit he deserves for the tough calls he took in leading Britain through the global economic crisis. Perhaps just as important though, people are looking more closely at David Cameron and not liking what they see.

I have been in all sorts of places this week and have heard a lot more negativity about Cameron. There has been a shift from a studied 'seems allright' neutrality to something closer to 'I can't stand that man.' They were the exact words of Angela Griffin, the actress who presents Angela and Friends on Sky One. On air, she horrified me, given the history of women and voting, by saying she had never voted. Off air she said she would this time 'because I can't stand that man Cameron.' I got plenty more of the same at the speaking events I did this week. And I particularly liked the encounter with a hospital porter who stopped me when I was visiting a friend, and said 'If you do one more thing in your life, help stop the Tories getting their hands on the NHS - because I remember.'

Enough of politics, back to culture. I picked The Hurt Locker as my film of the year on Newsnight Review last night. I hope they kept in the bit where I described Kevin Spacey as the greatest American living in Britain, not least because I'm on his case for a Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research gig.

I'll spend the afternoon in the company of Sky, not Jeff Stelling's genius programme, but a new sports comedy quiz show, A League of their Own, presented by James Corden. It sounds like a mix of Question of Sport and They Think It's All Over. Team captains are Jamie Redknapp and Freddie Flintoff. I'm on Freddie's team with Georgie Thompson who, as Sky Sports News viewers know, is Britain's chirpiest and best looking newsreader.

I will struggle to get in a mention of Maya. But try stopping me talking about the time I played with Maradona.

Finally, on Maya, pretty good review, once you get through all the stuff about it being a book about me and TB - I must say that all passed me by when I was writing it - from Mark Lawson (proper culture vulture) in The Guardian.

'... Campbell has always been an accomplished writer. ... And although it will pain large ­numbers of people to hear this, Campbell has written a book which is well plotted and suspenseful. Few who can bring themselves to start will be able to force themselves not to finish.' (Sounds like one for the paperback cover)

'Maya should clearly be played by Keira Knightley if Campbell gets the movie deal - which, on the basis of the story's twists and grip, should not be ruled out.' (I like the sound of that)

'The basic plot is borrowed from Othello, with Steve as Iago, and the tone and prose style from the novels of Tony Parsons.' (Like that too)

'The joke waiting to be made is that Campbell saves his best fiction for public inquiries - but much of Maya ruins that gag.' (Excellent. Thank you Mark.)

Now go to Amazon and buy it. Then go to http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. and buy The Blair Years. Half of the money goes to doing exactly what the hospital porter wants us to do. Have a nice weekend

I'm pleased to see Home Secretary Alan Johnson hitting back at the media coverage of the Security Service, and supporting a similarly spirited defence of MI5 by its head Jonathan Evans.

The coverage is a very good example of how the modern media works. A judge makes a judgement which the British government has sought to resist. It concerned a case of alleged US torture of Binyam Mohamed. From that two plus two is made any number some in the media like to imagine.

What might be legitimate criticisms made of the Security Service are then lost in a welter of what Johnson calls 'baseless, groundless accusations' and, further, 'ludicrous lies'.

He is right to resist what is now a kneejerk call on anything that dominates the news for more than a day or two, namely an independent inquiry.

Johnson said: "The security services in our country do not practice torture, they do not endorse torture, they don't encourage others to torture on our behalf, they don't collude in torture. Full stop.

"What we have to get back to is ensuring that our security services are treated fairly. People can make their arguments and their assertions but that shouldn't be taken by some commentators in the media as true simply because someone has said it's true. They're baseless, groundless, and there's no evidence to back them up.

"It's a free society and that's what actually the security services are out there to protect. But occasionally they have to argue back, they can't allow that kind of misrepresentation to carry on unthwarted.

"The security service applies the highest ethical standards and with men and women who risk their lives in many cases to protect this country but who can't speak for themselves. Jonathan as their leader was quite right to speak out for them."

One other point I would make. The same people now screaming abuse at the Security Service will be the first in the queue to demand what on earth they were doing if anything goes wrong. Then the questions will be why weren't more people under surveillance, why wasn't every lead followed, why were phones not tapped, why didn't the government spend more on the security services, and all the rest of it. We saw it after 7/7, and if anything like it happens again, we'll see it all over again.

I don't doubt there is bad as well as good in the Security Service, as in any organisation. But I reckon their actions and their standards would stand up to a lot closer scrutiny than the modern day journalist whose favourite expression now appears to be 'this story, if true...' folllowed by a torrent of interpretation, all designed to show the people who work to protect us in the worst possible light.

A day out of book promotion mode today to head to a conference organised by the Youth Sport Trust to celebrate the work of specialist Sports Colleges.

When TB talked of the three domestic priorities being 'education, education, education' sport was always an important part of that.

The size of today's event, with more than 2000 people there, emphasises the growth of Sports Colleges. From zero, then the first 11 early in our first term, there are now 501 of them, and of all the specialisms this is the one showing the fastest improving results. They use sport not just for its own ends but to help in the teaching of maths, English and foreign languages.

The Youth Sport Trust says there has been a 'quiet revolution'. My message to them today is that it is time to turn up the volume.

Because whoever wins the next election there are going to be some tough choices and the profile of any part of the public sector does matter when it comes to governments taking decisions.

Why do the Tories not dare say they would cut NHS spending, even whilst banging on about waste and bureaucracy? Answer, because the NHS is embedded deep in the hearts and consciousness of the British people.

Sports Colleges are a real success story, part of an important movement of change. Those who work in them know it. Those who learn there and their parents know about them. But there is little broader awareness.

By focussing exclusively on the issue of grass playing fields, the National Movement of Whingers and Cynics have developed the myth of participation in sport going backwards. It really is a myth.

When the Tories were in power, they did not even keep accurate figures for PE activity. 'Significant variations' was the official line. You can say that again. According to the Youth Sport Trust access to two hours' good sport and PE has risen fourfold to 90 per cent since 2003. And the huge network of School Sport Partnerships means there has been improvement in primary as well as secondary schools. Investment opposed by the Tories has been central to this.

The other myth spread by the Movement of Ws and Cs is that there is no competitive sport. There is now a national network of 225 local competition managers. We have had - widely ignored by the national media needless to say - the first UK School Games, now an established event with a top backer, Olympics sponsor Lloyds TSB. The official targets on participation have been smashed. London 2012 can only help the trend.

The people in the Tory party and the media who slag off our state schools and sport provision tend to have their own kids in private schools which have taken good sports facilities for granted.

Now that the state sector is catching up, and in some cases overtaking, they have a vested interest in running it all down to justify their own decisions.

Sport is a good thing in its own right. But it also happens to help shape better and more active people who shape better societies. That is why though the people I am speaking to in Telford today are not just involved in education policy, but health policy, crime policy, the economy, the environment and culture. We are surrounded by so much negativity, a lot of it media driven. Today I will be urging heads, teachers, sports co-ordinators, local authorities and everyone involved in the spread of sport through our schools to put the whingers and cynics out of their minds, and take real pride in the way they are delivering better education and so a better Britain.

I will also tell the story of how right around the world people have looked at Australia as the model to follow when it comes to developing grassroots sport. And who did the Aussies ask to advise them on a new model for the modern age? Answer Sue Campbell, no relation, a Brit, a terrific chair of UK Sport and now also the Youth Sport Trust, also in the House of Lords, who has devoted her life to elite and mass participation sport and has seen every stage of what really has, despite all the challenges, been a transformation.

She'll be there today too, living proof that if you ignore the Ws and the Cs, believe in what you do more deeply than the superficial negativity of the critics, you can actually make change happen.

** My assiduous book publicist (yes I am not the only one punting Maya left right and centre) has just reminded me apparently I will be in book promotion mode up there too, signing copies of novels and diaries alike. And to remind you, if you want to help raise money to fight the Tories, if you buy The Blair Years at http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. half of the cash goes to Labour.

David Cameron, his eye ever on a passing bandwagon, used the prosecutions arising from the expenses scandal to leap upon the one marked 'new politics.'

Put to one side the fact that his remarks seemed to drive a bus through the age old principle of innocent until proven guilty, they also showed up a phenomenal lack of judgement.

Because his attack would appear to be the thing that is finally bringing to the boil what GB at the weekend called the Ashcroft scandal. All Cameron's calls for transparency and openness are utterly hollow so long as he and his Party fail to answer the very straight-forward questions about Ashcroft's tax status, and the conditions he was asked to meet on becoming a peer. The Information Commissioner has criticised Cameron and Co for being evasive and obfuscatory on Ashcroft, and despite the news blackout in most areas of the media, this one is going to blow up as a big issue some time before or during the election campaign.

Watching first Sir George Young and then Michael Gove try to answer simple questions on Ashcroft on Monday's Newsnight, was just over the embarrassing side of comical.

We now have the situation of Cameron saying one day that it is no longer acceptable for parliamentarians to regard their tax affairs as wholly private affairs, and literally the next day say the opposite. New politics? Sounds like same old Tory arrogance to me. The arrogance of believing you have any right even to ask questions about transparency when you are so closed up about the man who has been pouring huge funds into key marginal seats.

The role of most newspapers and broadcasters has been pathetic in this but the signs are that is changing and that Ashcroft's bankrolling of the Tories is going to become the issue it deserves to be.

Meanwhile, as another bandwagon rolled by Chateau Cameron the other day, he said that if on any issue people signed 100,000 names on a petition, the issue would be debated in the Commons. Do these people ever stop to think?

It reminded me of a similiarly pathetic and populist move by one time Canadian opposition leader Stockwell Day who said that if enough people expressed a view there should be a referendum on any given issue, a government led by him would grant it.

The team of wily PM Jean Chretien immediately got going on a campaign to get huge numbers of signatures for a petition demanding that the first referendum under the new government be on the question 'Should Stockwell Day change his first name to Doris?'. Day started to dive in the polls under the weight of the hilarity. Defiant, he said it was not over till the Fat Lady sings. Cue the hiring of teams of overweight singers who turned up at his rallies singing 'Que Sera Sera'

'The future's ours, to see....' and it is bleak if this lot get their hands on Britain. Come on Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, anyone who knows the Cameron-Ashcroft Party would be a disaster for Britain - let's get going with Dave's Doris Day moment. 100k names on a petition calling for a debate on Ashcroft. Papers, radio stations, telly, where's your sense of humour gone? We need some fun in this campaign.

BUY A BOOK AND RAISE CASH FOR LABOUR ... HALF OF PROCEEDS FROM SALE OF THE BLAIR YEARS GOES TO LABOUR http://www.alastaircampbell.org click on bookshop

It is modestly comic how some media saddos continue to imagine I somehow used my magical powers of spin to ensure publication of my novel, Maya, coincided with my appearance at the Chilcot Inquiry.

Never having been one of those 'all publicity is good publicity' people, I don't quite buy the line that because I have been all over the telly and some of the papers on Iraq, people will rush out to buy the book. More important, poor Maya has barely been getting a look in amid the coverage of what I described as an emotional moment on TV, and yet which seems to have sparked a debate about whether it is ok for men to cry?

Interesting one this, and further revealing how they can never quite cope with things as they are, but have to take them to the next level, as football managers like to say. With my Mind Champion of the Year mental health campaigner hat on, may I say there is nothing wrong with men crying. Indeed, any reader of The Blair Years will know I am not averse to a good weep from time to time.

But Sunday morning on Marr was not one of them. So there, just for the record, I did not cry. I had a rather odd few seconds during which many things went through my mind, as I sought to explain on Richard Bacon's Five Live Show yesterday, so if you want to know more, go to iplayer. Nice chap by the way. Hope that doesn't harm him in Beeb upper echelons.

So Maya having been squeezed out, poor thing, what with her being an A-list movie star, I should put that right, by giving you an early taster of the kind of comments that might be appearing on the paperback. I won't bother with the published reviews - for which many thanks to Times, Telegraph, Scotsman, Mail on Scumday, Mirror (book of week), Time Out (ditto) and others who have made excellent comments will be vying for the honour of appearing on the paperback cover later in the year.

But I think it only fair to record, for example, that Mr Bacon, despite being a busy man with a million twitter followers to look after, and a radio show to run, said he took it to bed on Sunday night and read it right through in one go. So that has to be an 'absolutely, spellbindingly gripping.' (BBC)

When I did Adam Boulton's show on Monday, one of his producers confided to me 'I'd love to be able to say the stuff on 24 hour news and how we handle breaking celeb stories is unrealistic. But I'm afraid you've got us down to a tee.' Aka 'chillingly, spine-tinglingly realistic' (Rupert Murdoch Empire)

Janice Turner of The Times felt compelled during our interview to read the sex scene to me, in between telling me it was a real pageturner. 'Sexy as hell ... I read it again and again.'  (Janice Turner)

'I loved the ending' (Liz Grice, Telegraph) or maybe make that 'you will love the ending.'

I have upwards of a dozen of these now, but in the interests of balance I should record that someone sent me a private message on twitter saying I was a piece of human excresence and he would not read my book for that reason. But even there, I wonder if he would mind if I said 'I hate him so much I can't read this book but if I did I would probably love it.' No, maybe not.

I'm a bit confused about Simon Mayo's reaction. He told me he liked it, and gave me that impression when I pre-recorded an interview with him for his Radio 2 show at 5pm tonight. But he tweeted earlier 'once I put it down I couldn't pick it up.' He was clearly joking.

Anyway, am doing Loose Women today, is that doesn't sound too dirty. My mum says I need to take care, because they can be a bit scary, but I think Carol McGiffin isn't on today. She gave me a bit of a hard time for being so Labour last time I was on. Today  Lesley (a big Labour supporter), Lisa, Coleen and Kate (who will be if I do my Green Room schmoozing properly).

Meanwhile what bliss to be able to end the day with a midweek Burnley game in London, at Fulham. We are so full of confidence after winning at the weekend, and with Fulham suffering a real dip in form, I am buzzing with excitement at the prospect of us getting our first away win of the season.

Oh, and quite excited too that the Lord Ashcroft scandal finally appears to be coming to the boil. I don't know if you watched Newsnight, but before the discussion of my 'tears' (not a single mention of Maya poor thing) there was a hugely embarrassed and embarrassing interview with Tory George Young trying to explain Ashcroft's status, and later a second one with Michael Gove, who was also unable to give a straight answer to a straight question.

Most of the media have been utterly useless on this, as they have given Cameron the easiest ride of any party Ieader in our lifetime. But Newsnight suggested to me this one is not going away. Cameron had better get some clearer answers than the non-answers he has given so far. Because this is one of those issues that can explode during an election, and if he had any sense he would get it sorted before then. However, the fact he hasn't sorted it already says to me that for some reason he can't. Houston, he has a problem. Can't wait for take off.

*** BUY BOOKS AND RAISE CASH FOR LABOUR. IT WON'T BEAT THE BILLIONS FROM BELIZE THAT CAMERON HAS. BUT BUY THE BLAIR YEARS ON THIS SITE AND HALF THE MONEY GOES TO THE LABOUR PARTY http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php. EVERY LITTLE HELPS TO STOP BRITAIN GOING BACKWARDS

May I return to the claim made by Andrew Marr yesterday - and presented without qualification - that 600,000 Iraqis died in the Iraq war?

I did not push back at the time, because he added that these were UN figures. And given I had only just recovered from the moment of exasperation I described here yesterday, I did not want to get involved in a tit for tat row about statistics. Everyone knows a lot of civilians died.

But having looked at the issue this morning, I really think Marr has to explain that claim.

It appears to have come from a Lancet survey whose findings have been comprehensively rejected. There is certainly no evidence anywhere that I can find that would allow anyone to present these as somehow UN backed figures.

Casualty figures are inevitably controversial and also given the nature and length of the conflict difficult to assess.But both supporters and opponents of the conflict seem to view the so-called Iraq Body Count figures as likely to be the most reliable. They put the figure at 103722. That is a lot of people and a lot of devastated families. The Brookings Institute puts it higher, at 111,600. Others go higher still. But all are a long way short of Marr's casually tossed out figure.

The International Red Cross stated 'perhaps the best that the public can be given is exactly what IBC provides - a running tally of deaths derived from knowledge, supplemented by the weath of data of the Iraq Living Conditions Survey and Iraq Family Health Survey (which have their own limitations) provides enough information in the light of the circumstances. At a later date, additional surveys can be conducted to determine the impact and-or do demographic analysis. But for now, the Iraq Body Count's imperfect figures combined with the data of the ILCS and IFHS may suffice.'

In other words, we cannot be sure but this seems as good an assessment as can be made.

The Iraq Body Count also shows that from 2005 to 2009 the vast bulk of deaths were caused by the insurgency. 4650 are attributed to coalition forces. More were killed by Al Qaida suicide bombs than coalition forces.

Marr is surely as aware of that report as the one he chose to use. So who is sexing up a case now? And would such a claim stand up to the kind of questioning and analysis our presentation on Iraq has endured in successive public and parliamentary inquiries? Indeed, if he is as interested in answers as questions, he might wonder ... how long would he last in front of an inquiry seeking to examine his use of the information, and the totally false claim that this was a UN figure?

I guess another of the reasons I got angry yesterday is constantly being questioned by media people, many of whom would not stand up for more than a few minutes to the level of scrutiny people in politics have to live with 24-7.

Whilst I was looking through the facts and figures on this I also came across another figure that merits more attention than it gets.

In 2003 child mortality rates in Iraq were, at 130 per 1,000, higher than Congo, not least because Saddam diverted money for medicines to weapons.

In 2007 it was down to 44 per 1,000. That suggests that as many as 50,000 more children live every year as a result of the new freedoms Iraqis enjoy. Perhaps someone on the media might cover that one day.

As I said yesterday, I can at least see there are always two sides to an argument. But the honest debate people in the media claim they want would be helped if a few of these facts were sometimes allowed to get in the way of the story they want to tell, and the scores they want to settle over the fact that when one of those inquiries put one BBC story under real scrutiny, it was they not the government who were found wanting.

BUY A BOOK AND RAISE CASH FOR LABOUR ... HALF OF PROCEEDS FROM SALE OF THE BLAIR YEARS GOES TO LABOUR http://www.alastaircampbell.org click on bookshop

Some commentators are already suggesting GB must have gone into his interview with Piers Morgan with his express purpose of crying over the loss of his daughter.

I have not seen the interview but I have seen Gordon in the past get very emotional indeed about losing his first child, and about the fact that one of his two sons has a disease which means he and Sarah may face the tragedy of losing a child for a second time. Who wouldn't for heaven's sake?

He is, for a public figure, an intensely private man, who finds much of the stuff of modern politics and the modern media sometimes difficult to deal with.

But he knows that some who live outside the political bubble are as much interested in who he is as what policies he has for the country, with some unlikely to listen on the second unless they know a bit more about the first.

When TB did a Des O'Connor interview on ITV in Opposition, many of the papers and broadcasters attacked him, saying it was a way of avoiding tougher questioning. But given he was forever taking on the supposedly tougher interviews, that was always self-serving rubbish from a political media elite which thinks it should have a monopoly on setting the agenda.

The reason I was always keen for TB to do programmes like that, and why I support GB doing one with Piers, is that it is important for top flight politicians to reach as wide an audience as possible, on as wide a canvas as possible.

When TB ever did Newsnight or the Today programme, people inside the Westminster bubble would have it as a point of reference for a few hours, maximum a day. We had people mentioning, and writing to us, about Des O'Connor, for weeks and weeks.

GB will not have enjoyed opening himself up in the way it sounds like he did. But there is no harm at all in people seeing that when all is said and done, he is flesh and blood the same as everyone else.

I had a bit of an unplanned 'moment' myself this morning, which judging by the volume of traffic online seems to have been noticed. I thought hardly anyone watched those Sunday politcal shows any more.

With a new novel out - Maya, which I may have mentioned here a few times already - I had agreed to do Andrew Marr on the BBC and Adam Boulton on Sky, and I knew of course I could not expect them to restrict the interviews to me talking about what a rollicking good read my novel was (even if the reviews are saying exactly that).

So of course I had expected the kind of questions Marr put on Iraq. I had also been telling myself that given the history between me and the Beeb over Iraq - and Marr was central as he was their political editor at the time of the war, and a key player in the agenda they sought to set - I must not lose my temper, or reopen old wounds.

Fair to say I just about managed it, but it was a struggle. I could certainly have done without his glib introduction, in which he sought to link the September 2002 WMD dossier with the novel, ie my 'latest piece of fiction'.

But the reality is there is no question on Iraq I have not been asked many many times, and I guess it does get frustrating to be asked them again and again, knowing that most people have made up their minds one way or another. For years, we have been accused of lying when we know we didn't. For inquiry after inquiry, we've faced perfectly legitimate questions which we have answered as best we can. I have been at four inquiries now, and though the first three cleared me of the serious allegations of wrongdoing I faced, it is never good enough for those who opposed what we did.

Marr claimed he had no opinion or agenda, but it was exposed in the way he casually threw in a highly disputed figure about casualties - four to five times higher than the Iraq body count accepted by most organisations as the most reliable. As to his claim that his figure was backed by the UN, that was news to me and I suspect to them.

Journalism is supposed to be about seeking after truth. But I really do believe now that on this issue, every aspect of which has been gone into for so long and in such detail, most of the media are no longer interested in the truth at all. They are interested in those parts that fit their analysis - that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake and the consequences have been disastrous.

There is another point of view but what I felt once more this morning is that whereas I can see how people reached the decision that we should not have taken military action, the critics refuse point blank to see how the other point of view could possibly have been adopted. And they cannot even merely accept that a 'wrong' decision was taken - they have to believe there was duplicity or conspiracy behind it too.

So if I appeared lost for words, it was perhaps because there is nothing more to say, and if I had said what I was really thinking about the way the media has been covering the inquiry, and the way they cover public life more generally, I might have regretted it. So I let my mind race for a while, controlled the emotions surging around, then carried on.

I was glad to have the chance to explain why I got emotional by going straight to Adam Boulton's show. As I said, I do sometimes feel that people in public life are now treated by the media as though somehow they are devoid of humanity, do not have feelings, do not really care about anything.

To be fair a lot of the  comments doing the rounds online seem fair and reasonable, and the reactions on social networking sites mainly friendly and supportive. 

But we now live in an age where people can pass instant comment on events as they happen. So before seeing the interview with GB, they can make judgements that suggest venality in his crying over his daughter's death. Or imagine that I went onto a programme this morning to show a touchy feely emotional side to emphasise I am now as much a novelist as political operative.

In fact what happened was that Marr asked a question, and I was struck by the insight that he had precious little interest in the answer, and the exasperation button was duly pressed.

 BUY A BOOK AND RAISE CASH FOR LABOUR ... HALF OF PROCEEDS FROM SALE OF THE BLAIR YEARS GOES TO LABOUR http://www.alastaircampbell.org click on bookshop

I was at a dinner a few weeks ago with Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, who was distinctly gloomy about ever getting a proper resolution to policing and justice issues, which were always fraught but which finally appear to have been sorted. So congratulations to the two governments and the parties for reaching an agreement which appears to have kept the Northern Ireland peace process well and truly on track.

Peace in Northern Ireland is without doubt one of Tony Blair's and Bertie Ahern's greatest achievements, and Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen have shown the same level of commitment and attention to detail required to keep the process moving forward.

Nobody should be in any doubt that there will be difficult moments ahead, but yesterday was another good day for Northern Ireland, and another good day for strong and strategic leadership which focusses on the big issues, knows when to intervene, and knows how to keep going when the going gets tough.

(And if you found yourself drawing a contrast there between Labour and Tory, then is it any wonder?)

** There is a scene in Maya - did I mention I had a novel out? - where her parents complain that neighbours, who think they are being helpful, constantly take them horrible newspaper articles about her. It is much the same when you have a book out, because the book publicity team like everyone in the company - and the author - to know what kind of coverage is being generated.

That is how I knew the ghastly Jan Moir had written a piece yesterday bemoaning the fact that women journalists seemed to fall at my feet, and love the book. Unspoken of course was her belief that I should be saving myself for Paulipoos Duckydacre.

Today it is another downmarket Mail hackette having a popette, in the form of Amanda Platell, whose main contribution to media life was to help Piers Morgan work out how not to do television. He learned the lessons from their not terribly successful programme together, and is now so famous that he has a quote on the cover of Maya. She does a column.

Today's is largely a rehash of the Duckydacre line on John Terry, but buried in there is the suggestion that I deliberately coincided the launch of my novel with my appearance at the Chilcot Inquiry, to maximise publicity. 'Disgusting opportunism', she says. LOL, as we young hip people say.

As even Amanda must know, publication dates for books tend to be set - as this one was - many months in advance, certainly before I knew I was to be at the Chilcot Inquiry on January 12.

But what her comment reveals, much to my satisfaction, is how misguided the Tory right are in imagining how good we Labour spinsters are at our job. Come on, think about it, she is saying I am so brilliant at manipulating the agenda that I fixed the inquiry timetable, my own appearance at it, and my book, all to suit my own ends. Genius!

No wonder the Tories got so spooked by us the whole time. Because prior to playing a small role in the Piers Morgan global domination preparation plan, Amanda was also kind of my opposite number for the 2001 election when she was right-hand bod to William Hague. We spooked her then too, as some of you may remember from a film she made which largely consisted of her having rings run round her during the day, then going home to cry with a cat.

But this little line in The Daily Dacre today should give heart to all who work in Labour's media machine. The Tories still think we're far better than they are. And think about this too ... under Cameron and Andy Coulson (not out of the woods on phonetapping I hear btw) the Tories have had the easiest media ride of any leader in history, a global economic crisis to exploit, an expenses scandal to exploit, a sense of Labour being in power too long, a dip in support for policy on Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet still they are only inches ahead in the polls.

If they can't do a decent job with the wind blowing behind them, what are they going to be like when the real pressure comes on? I think the public are beginning to work out the answer.

Off to Burnley v West Ham now. Massive. Doing Andy Marr and Adam Boulton tomorrow. Might get a few mentions of the book in there I guess. Hope Amanda will be watching. And Jan. And all the other girls. And Paulipoos. Mwah mwah.

*** Before I go, I must draw your attention to today's FT. They kindly offered me the arts diary slot (me being an artist and all) and also kindly made a donation to Leukaemia Research for the pleasure. So kind, so kind, nice paper, nice paper. But what a picture! They have mocked me up in a wetsuit and headband alongside an Elvis impersonator.

I get the Elvis bit, because I mention a Labour fundraiser I am doing next month with Elvis impersonator Mark Wright. I get the wetsuit too, because I mention doing triathlons (and there is a shot of my beautiful racing bike in the background) But what's with the bloody headband, oh art director of arts diary? I have never worn a headband in my life. They are just so not me. Image rights lawyers are on the case, obviously.

To get the picture in they had to cut one of my little items, so I thought I would include it in here.

'I also launched a scheme on my website this week,' it said 'to sell individually signed copies of The Blair Years, with half of the money going to the Labour Party. It will not exactly dent the Ashcroft squillions enjoyed by the Tories, but every little helps.' http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog.php.

Thanks by the way to the people who have been thanking us for getting the books out quickly. I don't really do the online shopping thing. In fact I don't do the shopping thing at all. But I get the impression people are surprised when something arrives quickly and undamaged. Ta for the testimonials. Glad the system is working.

I am indebted to Labour's candidate in East Dunbartonshire, Mary Galbraith, for alerting me to an article which is about to make a miniscule piece of media history by becoming the first ever Daily Mail article that I quote favourably.

Yes, I know, I know, it is the most hateful and vile scumrag ever to have been published, and one article will not change that. And yes, I admit that I allowed an Associated journalist into my home the other day, the first ever, but contrary to her article that does not mean I am going soft. I was doing an interview to promote Maya, and I had no idea Metro was owned by The Mail Group. I keep telling people I'm out of touch but nobody listens!

And so, drumroll, drumroll, to the article. It is written by a man named John MacLeod, whose name might lead you to wonder if he is Scottish. He is, and his piece appeared in the Scottish edition of The Daily Mail.

In publishing it here, I am hoping that perhaps a few people in the rest of the country might see it. Because in addition to being published only in Scotland, Mary tells me she cannot find it at Mail Online.

Intriguing this. Nothing remotely controversial or off message goes in any of the Mail titles without our old friend Obergruppenfuhrer Paul Dacre knowing about it and sanctioning it - thanks by the way to whoever made that hilarious Downfall spoof with Dacre as Hitler raging at my refusal to requite his love - so either he has agreed to this piece - yes, it's coming - or he is losing his grip. Good news either way I'd say.

So here goes. It is quite long and in true Mail style I have edited out bits I don't like, or which don't fit my own agenda, but you will quickly get the drift.

'Six months ago, the impending General Election looked set to be a Conservative cakewalk.

The Tories were buoyant in the polls, fawned on by much of the press, free of division or internal dissent and taking full advantage of successive lucky breaks.

David Cameron's doughty and ruthless response to the Parliamentary expenses scandal - taking the opportunity to rid himself of a few backbenchers he did not like (did he?)- stood in sharp contrast to the Prime Minister's floundering. (ott)

Indeed, by high summer last year, it seemed Gordon Brown survived in Downing Street only by the pleasure of Peter Mandelson, in all his slimy gorgeousness. (don't like this bit but quite colourful and a useful way of showing they are always the Mail even when going off message).

But through the winter things have shifted, eroded - and changed. The opinion polls have tightened sharply, with the Conservatives unable to keep that lead in the teens essential to guarantee an overall majority in an electoral system unfairly (nonsense) skewed to Labour advantage. Mr Cameron himself seems in a more uncomfortable position. More and more critics have emerged in the Tory press and a significant chunk of older backbench Conservative MPs, while keeping schtum for the moment, have been alienated by the party leader.

They will cause him no trouble during the election but, should the Conservatives win outright with a parlous majority, then even a few incorrigible rebels can cause untold trouble, especially in a desperate economic climate when any new administration will have to make most unpopular decisions.

Cameron himself seems to have lost his edge of late. Last year, he routinely bested Gordon Brown at Prime Minister's Questions: in recent months, Mr Brown has had much the better of the exchanges.

The fatuous, airbrushed poster of Cameron the Great Leader, unleashed on the defenceless public after New Year, sank like a concrete kite in a nation which, after years of Tony Blair, is weary of messianic presidentialism. (kept this in because it suggests they see TB as Jesus. Maybe they are in love with him in Dacreland too. Je suis jaloux!!)

The Conservative leader tied himself in self-inflicted knots over an ill-defined tax break for married couples, which now appears, like an earlier pledge to hike the threshold for death duties, to be but a vague 'aspirational commitment'. (inheritance tax cut policy unmoveable, donors be assured)

In Scotland, absurd confusion now rules as to who precisely is in charge of Tory operations and who, assuming a Conservative win, will actually serve as Scottish Secretary. Meanwhile - and who'd have thought it? - Mr Brown, in all his glowering unspinability, has steadily started to recover poise and stature. There is, these days, a new presence to him. He gives every impression of relishing the knock-down-drag-out fight to come. (good passage - shows that authenticity is winning through v Cameron's lack of substance ... see my blog of the other day re focus groups)

Furthermore, as we the voters must soon make a hard choice in most anxious times, there is much wisdom in Hilaire Belloc's wry observation: 'Children always cling to Nurse, for fear of finding something worse.'

In his plump, dowdy, jowly ways, he (GB) is rather a welcome throwback to the pre-Thatcher days of avuncular, prosaic Prime Ministers.

The Prime Minister has also refused, consistently and from the start, to use his little boys for political advantage. They are never seen in public, nor flaunted for the cameras. ...Admittedly, in a Botox age obsessed with youth, vitality and skinny-chic, his appearance and odd physical tics count against him. But we are remarkably apt to forget that the Prime Minister's most disconcerting mannerisms - the baleful squint and the way his jaw drops at the start of every phrase - are the consequences of a serious boyhood accident, not outward hints of inner depravity.

But, as Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens (oh my God am I quoting him on my blog too?) and others have observed, there is something distinctly sinister about the anti-Brown frenzy of the past two years.

It reached its apogee last summer and centred on extraordinarily personal attacks, largely from people ruthlessly transferring their courtship to the rising sun of Cameron who would never have dared attack Gordon Brown when he was strong.

The election contest is now, to mild Tory horror, tightening rapidly because the British people have started to tumble to what is going on. They are beginning to realise how a herd mentality has largely skewed political reporting and how there has been a serious attempt to manipulate the thinking of voters. (Led in many ways by Dacre, which leads me to think this is a rogue element within the Mail, but I'm loving it)

There have been two recent tipping points. One was Mr Cameron's decision to renege on his 'copper-bottomed guarantee' of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which - like the European project as a whole - is hugely unpopular with the British public. (largely because our media lies about what's in it)

This volte-face was spun by his cheerleaders as 'courageous', 'honest' and 'realistic' - but the fact is he broke his word. And from that point, as a glance at the polls makes plain, he and his party forfeited significant support.

At a stroke, Mr Cameron had carelessly fed widespread suspicion that he is just another member of an august, centre-Left (come again?) political class who, on a range of issues - Europe, extreme gay rights, immigration and so-called ' climate change'  - operate in united and contemptuous disregard for the views of most ordinary people. (Kept in despite lunacy to remind you it is Mail)

The second drama was the virtual lynching of the Prime Minister by one of our most unscrupulous newspapers for daring - allegedly - to misspell words and miswrite a name in a personal, handwritten letter of condolence to the grieving mother of a fallen soldier.

In fact, the story scarcely stood up. The distraught woman gave a dreadful impression on the broadcast media and, to the chagrin of the rag in question, it found itself quite on the wrong side of public opinion. There was a real backlash of sympathy for Mr Brown, who had not meant to hurt anyone and was bewildered to find his good taken for evil.

...Admittedly, being Leader of the Opposition is about the most horrible job in public life. Some truly great Prime Ministers, such as Clement Attlee or Margaret Thatcher, were pretty hopeless at it. But David Cameron has so far failed to convince us he is a man of genuine conviction and substance.

He has not yet sealed the deal with British voters. Since New Year, his leadership has been marked by an unnerving timidity, while Gordon Brown - especially since the last, laughable, failed coup against him - has, remarkably, regained the initiative.

The next few weeks are the most important in Mr Cameron's life. Time is fast running out for him to show us who he really is...

The article then invites readers to email John MacLeod at jm.macleod@btinternet.com I will be sending one to tell him he can help to ensure Cameron does not become PM by donating £7.50 to Labour in the purchase of The Blair Years by clicking on http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog.php.

He should get two. One for Dacre. I'll put in a nice dedication. Honest.

Seventeen ... the number so far of texts and emails from journalists wanting to know why they haven't been invited to the launch party for Maya, my new novel published TODAY!!

Three ... the number of others asking the same question.

The journalists are likely to think this is because I have so few friends.***(see note at bottom) More likely is that my real friends know I am not a launch party kind of person. And the 'why haven't I been invited' stats comfirm me in my view that book launches tend to be events for the media, rather than events that might help get you good media for the book.

It doesn't stop them being paranoid about missing something though. The Evening Standard have tried via my agent, my publisher, my charity, my party and my website to find out where this mystery event is being held.

So this morning I thought, let's put them out of their misery, let's have the launch party here, online, on the website, on Facebook, on Twitter, wherever people want to hold it. Welcome to the virtual launch.

Here I go, I'm a bit late, a bit edgy but I'm arriving at the launch party ... there's someone from the publishers to meet me, oh God I've forgotten her name ...

Hi, er ... mwah, mwah.

'Great turnout,' she says. 'Gail's on her way.'

Mmmm. 'Come on in ...'

'Have you met Cindy from the Times diary?'

'Lovely cover,' says Cindy. 'Is it based on anyone you know? (subtle sexual innuendo in the word know?)

'Er, no, not really.'

Man sidles up.

'Hi, I'm from the Telegraph diary ... great turnout ... can I ask you about the sex scene?'

'Alastair,' says publisher person, looking over shoulder of Telegraph man. 'Gail's arrived.' (Gail is uberpublisher, and young publisher person knows who boss is.)

'Excuse me,' I say to Telegraph prurient 'Gail's arrived.'

Mwah mwah. 'Thank God you're here,' I say (Gail is old friend and knows how much I hate looking-over-shoulder type social events. 'Just smile and be nice,' she says. 'Treat it like the dentist. It'll soon be over and it won't hurt when you're home.'

'Hey Gail,' says man, loudly. Gail introduces him to me as visiting exec from US. Makes introduction. No mwah mwah. Manly handshake.

'Love the cover Alastair,' he says. 'Very different to The Blair Years.'

'Yes, it is. Different sort of book really.'

'Can I leave you two to it?' says Gail. 'Ian's arrived I think.'

'What? Where are you going?'

Diarywriteralert beeps in rear of my brain. I turn.

'Hiiiiiii,' says pretty twentysomething in skimpy black cocktail dress. 'Feel a bit overdressed, but going onto another doooo later.'

'Which diary do you work for?' I ask, pulling back slightly to avoid having to mwah mwah complete stranger.

'How did you gueeeeess?' she asks. 'Wow, that is amazing.'

'Kind of instinct. Trained observer you know ... comes with writing novels I guess.' Do my James Bond eyebrow raise.

'Go on then, which paper, bet you can't guess that?'

'Standard I'd say.'

'OMG that is unbelievable' ... giggle ... flirtatious eye contact ... 'so tell me about Maya? Who is she, that's what I reeeeally want to know?'

'Alastair,' says publisher person 'do you think we can do some pictures?'

'Yeah sure ... excuse me. Got to do some pictures. You know how it is.' Skimpy Standard girl does mock hurt. Eyebrow raise turns to wink. Castigate myself for flirting with someone less than half my age

'Thought you needed rescuing,' says publisher person.

'Thanks.'

Freebieloving-scroungeralert beeps in front of mind.

'Al, how ya doin' ... not seen you since we were on the Mirror doing shifts together. Lot changed since then.'

(Vaguely) 'Oh yeah. How are you?'

'Any chance I can get a few signed copies, for old times sake maybe?'

'Er, not sure what the deal is on getting copies.'

'Speak to Vicki over there,' says publisher person. 'Freebie loving scrounging e-bastard,' she adds, steering me to the photographer.

'Do you want to say a few words?' asks Gail.

'Do you know what, I think I'd rather tweet' ...

And so I do .... Maya out today. FB/twitterfriends go Waterstone's and make sure well displayed. Launch party at http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog.php.

Then I do a few mwah mwahs, evade the Mail on the way out (at least the publisher had not let them in) and jump in a cab for home.

Enjoy the book, those who get it.

* Meanwhile, thanks for the messages from those impressed with the quick delivery of The Blair Years. Remember it is 15 quid, with £7.50 going to the Labour party. http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

*** Need a bit of advice. I understand 5000 friends is the limit on Facebook. I am just short of that and have almost 1,000 outstanding friend requests. I think it looks a bit winky-wanky to set up a fan page, so what do I do?

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, states 'David Cameron is a mess. When will the media say so?'

It is a question I have been asking for some time, and it is nice to be joined by someone from The Guardian, some of whose reporters and commentators have been as much a part of the 'give Dave an easy ride' crew as the Murdoch press, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Beeb and the other broadcasters.

What is interesting, however, is that even with the tamest media coverage of any leader in our political lifetime, with both print and broadcast media applying until recently permanent double standards to the two main parties - roughly summed up Labour can do no right, the Tories can do no wrong - the question may not be as important as its placing on The Guardian's front page might suggest.

Because as so often, the public appear to be ahead of the press on this one. That may explain the narrowing of the polls.

As Cameron may be the next prime minister, many organisations are conducting polling about him and his party. I have seen several such analyses including one, done by a private sector organisation last night,  which asked people in focus groups to say what they liked, and what they didn't like, about Mr Cameron.

The positives are almost all about either his age or his presentation skills, with comments like 'well presented ... presentable ... a good talker ... has energy/charisma ... good in argument ... more personality than the others (Tory leaders)'

The only comments that might be termed to be rooted in policy were these ... he wants to cut taxes, and he praises the NHS.

Now let's go to the negatives - 'no substance ... flaky ... bit smarmy ... too smooth ... toff ... doesn't live in our world ... does not understand the working class ... can't trust him ... doesn't have any policies ... seems Tory old school ... bandwagon-jumper ... inexperienced ... not serious ... says what he thinks people want to hear ... got it wrong on the economy ... argues for the sake of it ... just says the opposite of what Labour does ... all about presentation ... childish ... plays to the crowd.'

There is still very little awareness of any of his policy proposals but when policies are explained - particularly his inheritance tax proposals, and his refusal to match some of Labour's public services pledges - there is a shift away from him. The lack of policy is being seen as a form of dishonesty, that Cameron cannot say what he would do because he knows it will not be popular, and so instead he tries to make it all about presentation and communications, and the likeability of the two leaders.

It is a strategy that has served him reasonably well till now. But as I have said on here many times, it was never going to be enough. He has not done the hard graft that makes people feel he is earning his victory. That too feeds the feeling that he has a sense of entitlement , which in turn reminds people of the privileged background he is keen to airbrush from his profile.

The coverage of Cameron and his so-called modernisation has been a really bad chapter in the UK media's history. There are signs that the pressure on him is beginning to mount and, though he seemed in confident form at PMQs today - extraordinary though it is how terrified he is to debate the economy - there are also signs that he is not very good at dealing with that pressure. As Freedland says, had a Labour opposition leader been responsible for the kind of muddle Cameron and Osborne have got themselves into on public spending, he would have been shredded by now.

Freedland also points out the way the media put next to no pressure on Cameron and William Hague to give straight answers to straight questions about the tax status of their bankroller and policy influencer Lord Ashcroft. Were this a Labour story, we would never hear the end of it. So with The Guardian appearing to recognise it's and others' failings in their coverage of the Tories, why don't they undertake to ask those questions about Ashcroft, and find ways of writing about the non-answers, every day until Cameron is forced to tell the truth? If they put their minds to it, that should not be too difficult.

** Nice to see the messages on FB and twitter that the first of the books have arrived, so the system is working! Remember, it is £15 for an individually signed copy of The Blair Years, half of which will be donated to the Party. For details go to

http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

Leadership is in large part about how you react under pressure.

Pressure does not come much greater than that which faced Gordon Brown when an economic whirlwind struck, and the world feared a plunge into a 30s style depression.

This morning I look at a Financial Times front page headline which says 'Manufacturing surges back' and above it a strapline recording 'fastest growth since 1994 - hopes rise for swifter recovery - exporters buoyant.'

At least some of the credit for that must go to GB and the government for stepping in as they did, making some very big calls which have helped prevent recession becoming depression, and helped limit the impact in terms of jobs, homes and savings. Not a bad year's work. Under pressure.

David Cameron, as Opposition leader, is always inevitably under some pressure. But with so many economic and political factors stacked in his favour, he can count himself lucky that thanks the the tamest media coverage of any leader in our political lifetime, the pressure on him has been less intense than on any leader in our political lifetime.

The narrowing of the polls suggests not simply that the economy is beginning to pick up, and that some are able to make a link with government actions, but also that the public are ahead of the media in their questioning of Cameron and Co.

The weekend confusion over their plans for cutting public spending are the result once more of Cameron's failure to do the strategic and policy heavy lifting needed to turn an Opposition party into a party of power.

So when they sensed the mood felt right for an austerity message, that is what he delivered. When he realised that he had in fact got the mood wrong, he trimmed his sails, then did so again, and again, until now people are unsure what he is saying at all.

As part of his 'rundown Britain' strategy, he tries to put the UK in the same bracket as Greece, whose economy is close to kaput. But in his own plans he has now retreated from the obvious medicine such an economy needs. This exposes the hollowness of his strategy - he lacks the courage to take the tough decisions required by his own analysis. So all he is left with is talking down Britain, which in turn erodes the sense of hope and optimism an opposition leader should be able to capture.

So whilst he traipses around playing back a line one of his people heard in a focus group - namely that we can't go on like this - his poor shadow chief secretary is reduced to mumbling that first year cuts are going to be 'one billion, one and a half, something like that.' Never mind the vagueness of it - back to not having done the work - it is a pinprick if they are serious in their view that we face a 'Greek-style budget crisis' as George Osborne calls it.

Throw in the impact of the airbrushed posters, the far more creative doctored versions of it, and you realise doubts about Cameron are growing just at the time he should be cementing the deal with the British public, making them feel it is both inevitable and right he and his team should now be running the country.

He's ignored my advice on strategy before, and I hope he will do so again. But I'll give him a bit more anyway. If Labour had been asked to devise a policy that reminds people that Tories care more for the rich than they do for the poor or the middle classes, it would have looked something like the inheritance tax cut for the richest families in the country that Dave and George came up with. He should drop it, even if it means losing the donors who pressed for it.

And he would be wise to scrap his other tax commitment, to give a tax break for marriage, which has already created enough confusion at a time the Tory leader needs a bit more clarity in what what he's saying.

GB may not be the greatest communicator in the world, and he may lack Dave's touchy feely grasp of the instant soundbite.

But if they were to look back on the past twelve months - one has steered Britain reasonably safely through economic crisis, the other has created nothing but confusion in his tax and spending plans, and blown half a million quid on the most ineffective and ill-advised poster campaign since 'are you thinking what we're thinking?'

** Thanks for the kind and the not so kind messages coming through amid book orders yesterday. Both are welcome, provided you pay £15 for The Blair Years, half of which will be donated to the Party. For details go to

http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

In addition to publishing my new novel, Maya, this week, I am today launching a scheme to raise money for Labour's campaign to keep out the Tories by selling individually signed copies of The Blair Years.

I don't pretend it will rival the Belize millions the Tories can rely on, but every little helps, as the man from Tesco's rightly says.

The plan is this – if you want to get the book with a personal dedication, you order it on the site, stating who you would like me to dedicate it to, and what message - within reason - you would like inside. Meanwhile pay by Paypal.

There are three versions of the book - hardback, trade paperback, and paperback. They retail at £25, £14.99 and £9.99 respectively.

The ones being sold here are the trade paperback, which is the hardback text in a soft cover, usually sold at airports and overseas.

We are charging £15 and I will donate £7.50 of each sale made through this site to the Party.

The idea came to me from the many fundraising dinners I do for local Labour parties. Some make a point of buying my book in advance, getting cut price deals by ordering a few boxloads from the publishers, selling them at face value and keeping the mark up for campaign funds.

I have now purchased a good number myself and asked someone to take charge of running this scheme through the site. John Prescott did something similar with his own book, Prezza, to raise funds for Go Fourth.

I also have a limited number of hardbacks which I intend to sell in the same way, at a higher price, at Labour fundraisers. Likewise if people think they can make money from selling the trade paperbacks at Labour events I will not be attending, they are welcome to buy signed copies here.

I hope some of you will think that whether for yourself, or as a present, or a raffle prize at your own events, this is a book worth having and a scheme worth backing.

The most we have raised for one copy, in the week it came out, was £60,000 paid by a businessman for a copy signed by TB, GB, JP, Alex Ferguson and me at a Labour sports fundraiser.

So it has already raised good sums for the party. As an election nears, I hope it can raise more.

What with quite a few interviews to promote Maya, a few speeches and other things going on, I have a busy week ahead, but we will endeavour to get the signed books out to people in good order. But this is not Amazon, so bear with us if it takes a few days to reach you.

I stayed up in Burnley after our latest heroic defeat last night to do a fundraiser for the town's new Labour candidate Julie Cooper.

It was the perfect venue for a speaking event - looking out over the hallowed turf of Turf Moor.

But may I assure those political obsessives who complain when I do a Burnley blog here that this is not one of them; and assure those who share my Burnleymania that my weekly Aol Football Fanhouse column will be posted later today. Fair to say it was John Terry's day.

I made the point during my remarks to the dinner that with so much cynicism about politics, and so little trust in the media, old-fashioned door to door, face to face campaigning in the community is going to be more important than ever in the forthcoming election. When people talk about who they trust, the truth is most at least trust family and friends, and will listen to neighbours and workmates. So political activists are going to matter as never before. One lesson from Barack Obama's campaign is that the more you have of them, and the younger and more energetic they are, the greater your chances of success.

People make a great deal of how Obama used the web to raise money. More important in my view was the way he used it to turn sympathisers into supporters and supporters into activists who would then take his message out to people in their own circles.

At too many Labour events I do, the average age is too high, so it was great to see a good proportion of young people last night, including one who bought a copy of my new novel Maya - did I mention I had a novel out this week? - and asked me to dedicate it to to her twittername, gracefh. I see she tweeted this morning that she finds the book 'very exciting' and is already up to page 150. Excellent news gracefh. 

Last night's younger element included a group of Labour students from Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan Universities, who had exactly the kind of energy and commitment the party is going to need in bulk if we are going to stave off the threat from the Tories.

They campaign all over the North West, and had recently been up as far as Barrow to help my old  colleague John Woodcock. 

As my son and I were driving to Manchester at the end of the evening, we gave three of them a lift back. It was a pleasure to listen to young people who had a real passion for politics and whose passion was driven by their knowledge of the difference it made to people's lives.

So thanks to philosophy student Ben Furber, English student Talia and politics student Lauren for cheering me up after the Chelsea defeat, reminding me what politics is all about, and showing me that Labour politics still has the capacity to inspire a new generation no matter how much cynicism surrounds them.

Talia said I had been right to emphasise the importance of activists persuading family and friends. 'A lot of my family and friends aren't political at all,' she said 'but most will vote Labour simply because every time I see them I give them a reason why they should.' Now THAT is what you call a campaigning mindset. MPs take note.

By Peter Kyle, Progress Online

I was at university on the 11 September 2001, in an open plan office with other postgraduate students. It's not a day I or anyone else will forget. So many people said at the time that ‘the world will never be the same again'. It was an obvious point but how right they were.

The most immediate tangible change to the feel and tone of politics was regarding international affairs. Afghanistan was the most obvious and decisive action but underlying it was a distinctive hardening towards other fascistic and authoritarian regimes, most notably Iraq.

Once it became obvious that the build-up of pressure on Iraq would only end in either a full backdown by Saddam or military action, university protest groups began to spring up and the slogan ‘Don't Attack Iraq' was born.

The faculty hastily arranged an event on campus with lectures so students could engage with the issues and learn some more background in the process. International relations lecturers and politics professors were lined up to give briefings, and I was invited to speak about my experiences in the Balkans where I had been an aid worker during the conflicts there.

I was one of the first speakers and I tried to put the ‘humanitarian' into humanitarian intervention, and spoke about the ambiguities of operating in situations where military and political forces reign so supremely and brutally. All went well until I rather casually added that, "of course we had tremendous public support for the aid effort from back home for our work in Albania and Kosovo, even though I was always aware that the UN had never voted on this and it was a legally dubious military intervention".

All hell broke loose and I was heckled not only by the 300-strong audience but also one of the academics on the panel waiting to speak! After that everything I said, however innocuous, was judged as a political statement on Iraq and the heckling turned into barracking until I called it a day and wandered back to the panel to observe the pinched and angry faces from a safer distance. The next speaker was an international relations lecturer who knew his audience well, he delivered a rabble-rousing pacifist manifesto to much applause. I turned to the politics lecturer to my left and said, ‘I thought we were here to learn?'

I'm in a state of dizzy deja vu as I write. Tony Blair's session at the Iraq Inquiry has just broken for lunch, yet everyone who is not one of the five committee members has already made up their mind. In particular, and most disgracefully, vast swaths of the media seem to have thrown journalistic curiosity out of the window and are acting with less curiosity and academic rigour than those sour-faced undergraduates eight years earlier.

Despite the inexorable march of the information age in which we now live, we still rely heavily on the media to educate us on current affairs and issues of public policy. But something has gone very wrong and you would be hard pressed to find any educative value from any of the reporting of the Iraq Inquiry since the day it was launched.

Ironically I was walking past the QEII Centre, where Blair sits today, listing to the Guardian Politics podcast the week the inquiry was announced. Tom Clark, a leader writer for the Guardian and presenter of the podcast, said words to the effect, ‘This is going to be a whitewash anyway because the commissioners are neocons like Sir Lawrence Freedman who helped Blair write the Chicago speech'. What? WHAT? It was hard to internalise the stupidity of the statement, which managed in one moment to expose the ignorance he had of both the term ‘neocon', the work of Sir Lawrence, and the ease at which journalists speak (and write?) without thinking. To think that at that moment he was one of the great gatekeepers between knowledge and the population filled me with horror.

Yet that early experience was a template for the way forward, with the media constantly editing, spinning and selectively choosing stories that fit their own opinions and narrative, not at all what we, the public, need, which is for journalists to report and educate and allow us the freedom to interpret ourselves.

If you doubt for a second that journalists are being led by opinion rather than fact or evidence, look no further than those on Twitter.

Paul Lewis from the Guardian was ahead of the curve earlier this week by asking, "Who out there is planning to protest against Blair on Friday? I'm writing a story about you". Ten out of ten for innovation: Paul bypasses spinning a story and incites one entirely by promising people a mention in the paper in return for turning up.

Blair had barely been giving evidence for an hour today when the Mirror's Kevin Maguire declared, "Blair: ‘It's not a lie or a deceit or a conspiracy but a decision.' Yes, the wrong decision". Glen Oglaza from Sky News thinks "they need a journalist on the panel. Too academic in my view". If they had Kevin Maguire it would all be over very quickly, no need for questions at all - he knows! Pity the Mirror readers tomorrow, some poor buggers may actually want to make up their own minds.

Today's Tweeting frenzy gives us a unique insight into the way some of our most notable journalists and journalistic institutions approach a story. Take Channel 4. Krishnan Guru-Murthy, who exclaims "oh purleeese!!! Blair explains how he slipped up in the Fern Britten interview!" Nice to know that the most powerful editors of our age - the people who decide live on air who speaks, the questions they answer and how long they get - aren't overly opinionated. It would be reassuring, at the least, to think that Guru-Murthy has the capacity for reflection. Perhaps he was feeling pressured into action by his fellow Channel 4 News presenter, Cathy Newman, who articulated her views with remarkable clarity: "blair using weasel words on fern...annoying sir roderic the rottweiler didn't pursue". Who says Twitter's 140 characters is limiting?

But the prize for journalistic rigour, erudite exposition, and really putting in the brain power on behalf of her readers goes to Cath Elliott, who writes for the Guardian: "Blair really is a smug smarmy bastard". I'm sure we'll all be turning to her writing from now on for considered insight.

What's to be done? Well, the advice given to me by the politics lecturer back in that rowdy lecture hall in 2002 seems more sage today than ever before. "You want to learn? You need to spend less time listening to this lot and more time in the bloody library!" 

I watched most of this morning's TB session on the Iraq inquiry website. I don't know who put the site together but I wished we'd had more of them around when I was doing government communications. It is clear, simple and very well designed.

It also means it is possible to watch a screen freed from the clutter of broadcasters who seem to think the public's attention span is as a gnattish as theirs. I'm all for twitter as one form of communication, but I'm not sure we need the running commentary of reporters, or the constant reminders of what has already been said.

I said when this inquiry first started that some people will never believe that there was a case for the war in Iraq, and will always believe that there was some duplicity or conspiracy behind the decision to go to war.

There was nothing said this morning that I haven't heard many times before, but for me the most important part of the procedings was when TB pointed out that ultimately this was a judgement that he as Prime Minister had to make.

The inquiry is rightly going over all the key moments in the decision-making processes involved, and pointing out that at every turn, different options could have been pursued and different decisions taken. That is the nature of any walk of life, but perhaps especially politics and international statesmanship.

It is clear from the blanket coverage, here and abroad, the all day trending on twitter, and the volume of traffic to news sites, that his appearance will generate millions of comments, but ultimately there are only two views. He made the right judgement. Or he made the wrong judgement.

Many of those who think he made the wrong judgement may express themselves more violently, and frankly nothing said today is likely ever to move them from the position they hold.

As someone who thinks he made the right judgement, and as someone who saw all the processes that led to him making it, I think what today has shown so far is that he was fully seized of the enormity of the decision, but that ultimately the security and strategic interests of the UK left him with no option but to take the course he did.

Too much of this debate is conducted in black or white terms. Political and diplomatic judgements are rarely black and white. But those who say he was wrong, let alone those who say he is evil, or a liar, or any of the other insults bandied around by opponents, at least have to acknowledge the 'what if' question that he posed this morning. What if Saddam had been left unchecked, continuing to defy the UN and face down the world, and what if he had continued to develop and one day use - as he had before - a WMD programme? Judgements are rarely black and white. Nor are unintended consequences. There would have been consequences to inaction too. 

Three observations.

1. Yesterday's report suggesting some failings in the government's record on inequality attracted widespread broadcast and print media coverage. Today, so far as I can tell from a quick skim around the place, only The Guardian does much with a report showing a fifty per cent rise since the mid-90s in the likelihood of England's poorest teenagers going to university .

The report, by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, shows that participation rates have soared in the past five years in particular, with disadvantaged 18 and 19 year olds now 30% more likely to enrol at universities than they were in the mid-2000s.

Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Sheffield describes it as probably the greatest social achievement of the Labour government since 1997, and says it was achieved not at the expense of upper and middle class children, but because of changes to the whole education system and the massive increase in funding for state secondary schools. A government policy success in other words. Hence the news blackout.

2. Amid the ongoing debate about special advisers, whether in the recent 'Better Government Initiative', or in some of the questioning at the Iraq Inquiry, I would like to remind people of Jonathan Powell's role in the Northern Ireland peace process. Both TB and Bertie Ahern are on record as saying that Jonathan's role was crucial. It was in my view precisely because he was a special adviser - known to be close to TB and also able to operate politically - that sometimes he was able to make things happen in a way that permanent civil servants could not.

I hope the current difficulties over policing are resolved. I hope too that the Tories are not messing around, as some reports of recent meetings with Unionists have suggested. It would not surprise me however. During the most difficult parts of the peace process, they talked the talk on bipartisanship, but the itch to pull away was never far beneath the surface, whether because of their closeness to the Unionists, or more likely the desire to make life more difficult for TB.

3. Similar duplicity from some senior Tories, notably William Hague, on Iraq. In the build up to the war, the Tory line was that we were not doing enough about Saddam, and we were not doing it quickly enough given the obvious threat he posed. That was even before their leaders were given access to the same intelligence that ministers saw. On that basis, and because of the record and the arguments that were played out time and again in public, they supported the war. Now the wind is moving in a different direction, and virtually all of the media have joined the anti-herd, some senior Tories move with it. Leadership it ain't. And I rather agree with the point Philip Stephens made in the FT the other day, that it seems odd, given the Tory votes were important on this issue, that they are never asked searching questions about their positions then and now.

All of which brings me to TB's appearance at the inquiry. If I was surprised at the scale of coverage of my own appearance, frankly nothing would surprise me tomorrow. I heard Radio Five Live's trailers for what will doubtless be all-day coverage. It sounded like they used the people normally employed in hyping Cup Finals or other major sporting events.

Even more than with the Hutton Inquiry, the media have tended to cover those parts of the testimony that have fitted their own pre-judged agenda. They constantly say they want the truth. The truth is they want those parts of the story that fit their analysis.

As I said when giving evidence, there is another view, even if it gets very little airtime. Many Iraqis, who know what life under Saddam was like, hold it. So do more British people that the one-sided media approach would suggest. I see that the indefatigable Stan Rosenthal has taken out an ad in The New Statesman saying that 'an open inquiry is one thing. Reporting it in a highly selective, slanted and misleading way to vilify our former Prime Minister is quite another.'

It won't change the reporting I suspect. But it is no bad thing to remind people that is the kind of reporting we are getting.

John Rentoul, a rare voice in the media who stands against the herd on Iraq, has also spotted the ad, and pointed out that just because the Blair-haters are angrier than everyone else doesn't make them right.

Say what you like about Peter Mandelson - some of you will doubtless take up the invitation - but he knows how to pack a few messages into a newspaper interview.

But Peter set it out differently. I quote now from the Labour Party's media monitoring department's account of this part of the interview. ‘We've come out of it better than most people hoped or predicted because a lot of people around the country tightened their belts. They made real sacrifices. People have given up hours or some of their salary to help employers through. There are employees and employers for whom the recession has been a real struggle but whose sacrifices have enabled many more businesses to come through the recession intact than was the case in the 1980s or the 1990s. The real heroes of the recession are the British people'.

But he is nothing if not Labour and so never far away from taking a shot at the Tories, whose bad calls on the recession get precious little media attention considering they are seen by many as a government-in-waiting. ‘Many people on the shop floor and the high street are still feeling the effects of the recession. We aren't out of it completely. We have stuck by businesses through the recession so we can blunt the impact of unemployment. But the Tories called the recession wrong and now are calling the recovery wrong. They're saying, ‘pull support away & start cutting into government spending & investment straight away'. If you swing the axe blindly you will find yourselves cutting the roots of growth rather than the branches of public spending. That is the great risk posed by the Tories. If the Tories get the chance to call this wrong later this year we will be at risk of slipping back into recession and unemployment starting to mount again. It's not a question of whether you reduce the deficit, it's when and how. Get that wrong and we will be taking a colossal risk with the economy ... The recovery remains fragile. The urgent priority for businesses is for the government to maintain support for the economy and to lift and maintain demand.'.

Peter went through some pretty bruising election defeats in his time and clearly shares my view that the Tories really are just banking on 'time for a change' and don't feel they have to do that much to show they deserve to get back. ‘I think those like David Cameron, who think all they need to do is sit back, say little and wait for power to be passed to them on a plate will be in for a shock. The time will come fairly soon for everyone to start looking behind the airbrushed posters of Cameron and ask what does this guy and this party mean for me and my family?'

He was also very good on the need for Labour to show themselves as a team of ministers, in contrast to a Tory frontbench, only a handful of whose members are generally known by the public.

Last word to the paper in which his views appeared, and an editorial saying that the announcement we are out of recession should cause us to pause and reflect how much worse it could have been if the Labour government had not stepped in, salvaging banks, savings, homes and jobs. 'Either Britain moves forward with Labour values and policies or it slips back with a Conservative Party whose cuts would plunge Britain back into recession,' it says. Hear hear.

Forgive me if I have only one thing on my mind today - no not that, nor even plugging Maya (out soon by the way and may I say the man from the Mirror, who gave my first novel a great write up, says he likes this one even more) so what with Time Out's Book of the Week, and 'steamy and intriguing' from the Mail on Scumday and that nice write up in Saturday's Times, Maya is shaping up nicely. I LOVE the cover.

But no, not even the excitement of a novel about to be published, nor any political event, nor even the fact that Leukaemia Research yesterday rebranded and became, enfin, Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research (makes sense all round), nor even a family event, no, nothing can get away from the fact that Bolton v Burnley matters more than anything else in the world today.

It's a big game anyway, two North West rivals in need of points to climb away from the relegation zone. But the departure of Owen Coyle from the manager's job at Burnley to the same berth at so-called 'bigger club' Bolton has added considerable spice to this fixture.

Unlike Bolton, on whom I spied at Arsenal last week, Burnley always have a pretty good away support. And Bolton having generously allocated us 4,700 tickets, all went quickly and plenty of Burnley fans are still looking. Of course Coyle will always be remembered in part because he led us to the Premier League but his departure and the manner of it left a bitter taste in a lot of Burnley mouths, and he knows he will be on the receiving end of a lot of noise tonight.

Hopefully the players will be up for it every bit as much as the fans and it promises to be a great night.

So apologies in advance to the people I have meetings with this morning. I won't be concentrating. I just want to get on the road again and hope it is a better journey than the one I made at the weekend. I had been hoping to make a little vlog about the magic of the FA Cup. Didn't quite work out like that, as you can see.

So if he did tweet, how might David Cameron have summed up his press conference this morning? 'nice easy questioning, avoided getting pinned down on tax rises/public spending, backtracked quite well on Edlington.' That was my immediate offering. A quick 'Cameron' search on twitter suggests many alternatives.

He explained that one of the reasons he is resistant to joining the ranks of the twitterati is his evident concern that he would not be able to think through what he would say. That sounded very odd. As he said, as a top flight politician, he is constantly communicating in different ways, and thinking on his feet, so I found his lack of confidence about his own ability not to screw up in140 characters a tad alarming.

But then I wondered if perhaps this is his way of signalling that despite what most who were tweeting during the event seemed to think, he is actually a man of great substance, so great that it is impossible to reduce his great substantial thoughts and policies to 140 characters. 'Cameron - too serious to tweet'. Try that one on the next airbrushed poster.

It may be that he thinks he cannot get his thoughts into short bitesizes, but in truth, as the press conference showed once more, he speaks a lot, yet says so little.

When the transcript comes to be typed up, there will be a lot of words down there, a lot of questions on a lot of subjects, but actually very little that couldn't all be summed up in a tweet or two.

Fixed term parliaments? Good idea, er, but bad idea. Prison ships? Need more prison places. Not sure how to get them though. Marriage in the tax system? Sounds great, still no clearer how we do it. Deficit reduction = tax rises/spending cuts? Avoided Nick Robinson. Adam Boulton had a go. Avoided him, but they noticed. Managed to avoid without sounding like I was avoiding. Phew.

Best mid-event tweet in my eyes the one that asked 'has Cameron just admitted to having long-standing credit card debts - these millionaires'.

There was a moment during Barack Obama's multi-squillion-dollar presidential campaign when his team realised they had so much money in the war chest that they bought a mass of advertising they probably didn't need.

That is one 'problem' unlikely to affect the Labour Party this year. Whereas American campaigns always seem to do it bigger, if not always better, in Britain there are both legal limits and, this year in particular, more significant financial constraints which mean this is certainly not a 'money no object' campaign for Labour.

Yet already this year there has been a good example of how money does not always buy political advance, and how a bit of creative thinking can undo the best of expensive intentions by your opponents.

Thanks to Lord Aschcroft and the Belize billions, David Cameron's Tories do not have to worry as much as Labour about where the next poster or glitzy launch is coming from. But if I ask you what you remember of Cameron's New Year glitzy poster launch, the chances are you will remember the row over the airbrushing of his face; or as you are a creature of online political consumption, you might remember the many and often humorous touched-up versions which did the rounds; Cameron with Thatcher's hair was one that stuck in my mind; others which turned his now forgotten strapline into a reminder of his policy on inheritance tax, or the Tory record on the NHS.

Some, of course, will remember the basic message that the Tories were trying to put over, which was that it was time for a change. At least I think that's what it was? No, hold on, weren't they saying they could be trusted with the NHS? I can't remember. But even if some of you can, and even if you absorbed the message as intended by the poster designers, you'd be hard pressed to say they got a good bang for their buck.

Given the imbalance in spending power between the parties, we should expect more big Tory waves of poster and press advertising. But the shaky start, and the seeming public desire to dismiss and contaminate such advertising, means they will have to come up with something sharper and clearer if they are going to get their message through.

Of course part of their problem is lack of agreement about what the core message should be, which is why they tend to come back to the rather lazy and over-assuming 'time for a change.' It is clear that the public want to hear more from the Tories about what they would actually do in power, but the more they hear, the less they seem to like it, which puts Cameron in a difficult Catch 22.

There always was an argument in campaigns about the relative advantages of press, poster, high profile events, leafleting and local campaigning. I think the local campaigns are going to be more important than ever. There too the Tories have a big advantage in terms of the cash allocated to this. But where local Labour parties are well organised, well led and able to enthuse young activists to get involved, they have shown the value of face-to-face campaigning.

I think we sometimes learn the wrong lessons from Obama's campaign. It is true he used the internet brilliantly to raise money, spread the message and rebut his opponents' attacks. But above all his campaign team used the internet to turn neutrals into supporters, turn supporters into activists, then empower those activists to fight the fight at street level.

You need some money to run that kind of operation. But not as much as you need for a poster campaign. And as Cameron has already discovered, glossy poster campaigns are not what they were once cracked out to be. In the world of modern campaigning, in the era of 24-7 media, paradoxically the old-fashioned door to door, face to face stuff is what is needed more than ever.

PS -- I must for the first and probably last time in my life thank the Mail on Scumday this morning for making my new novel, Maya, sound like a raunchy sex romp. There is in fact only one real sex scene in the book - and you have to get well past page 300 for that - but I reckon a few MoScumday readers will have ordered it on the back of the paper's 'political editor's' testosterone-charged account.

They have even found a real-life Maya - a former TV presenter they somehow manage tenuously to link to Gordon Brown - and a lovely photo of her in a figure-hugging red dress.

Amid the pop psychology which somewhat tortuously tries to link the book to Tony Blair's appearance at the Iraq Inquiry - don't ask, it would take too long to explain - they draw comparisons between me and the novel's narrator, Maya's best friend from school. For example, we both support struggling football teams in claret and blue. Well, that would be Burnley for me and .... er ... Chelsea. We know most Scumday journos can't write. But clearly some can't read anyway.

And no, I did not buy a copy of the paper. The publishers saw it online and pinged it over. For heaven's sake don't anyone buy the rag. Buy the book. 'Steamy and intriguing' (Mail on Scumday)

And to go back to the fundraising theme, stand by for a special offer we are launching here soon using The Blair Years to raise money for the Labour Party.

I was sent this link yesterday to a handy little map the Labour Party has created to show relative levels of unemployment in 1992 ­ ie the last comparable recession ­ and now. Pretty much everywhere in the country, the picture is the same. There are fewer people unemployed now than there were then.

And one of the reasons for that is that we have a Labour government that does not believe the State can do nothing but must stand idly by while markets decide everything; and a Labour government that does not believe that unemployment is a price worth paying. Instead, under Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's leadership, this government has acted, and seen off the worst of the damage that could have been done.

I spent a few minutes yesterday testing the map out by clicking around some of the places I know well.

Take the place where I was born for example, Keighley in West Yorkshire. In ‘92 under John Major there were 35,975 unemployed in the Leeds area. Today there are 23,773. Not good for those 23,773 people out of work of course, but it means there are 34% fewer of them than there were when the last version of do-nothing Toryism was in charge. And there's far more help and support to get into work than there was back then.

Or take Burnley, which I may have mentioned once or twice before. 3,803 unemployed in ‘92, and 2,441 now. 36% difference. I'm looking forward to the games against Reading on Saturday (6,757 in ‘92, 4,099 now, 39% difference) and the match of the season next week when we unCoyle Bolton (12,885 in ‘92, 8,406 now, 35% difference).

Then there's Bradford where I had my first term in senior school before we had to move away from Yorkshire after my dad's accident meant couldn't practice as a vet any more. 25,277 unemployed in ‘92, as against 15,378 now. A 39% difference.

We moved to Leicester. 18,337 out of work in ‘92, 12,808 now. 30% difference.

My dad was born in the Hebridean island of Tiree and my mum in Ayrshire. Tiree is part of Argyll and Bute, where 4,243 were unemployed in ‘92, and 1,734 now. 59% difference. In East Ayrshire, 7,574 were out of work in ‘92 as opposed to 4,229 now. 44% difference.

My Scottish heritage takes us every year for a holiday at Fort William in the Highlands. 11,460 unemployed in ‘92, 3,910 now. 66% difference. I still have a lot of family elsewhere in Scotland. In ‘92, unemployment across Scotland stood at 251,774. These days, it's 131,872. 48% difference. My brother is in Glasgow. 48,242 unemployed in ‘92, 23,393 now. 52% difference.

Then there's my higher education days. Cambridge. 4,386 unemployed in ‘92, 1,920 now. 56% difference.

Tavistock, where I started as a trainee reporter and first met Fiona. 1,881 out of work in ‘92, 558 now. 70% difference.

Since Fiona and I moved to live in London, we've lived mainly in Camden. 14,999 unemployed in ‘92, 6,014 now. 60% difference.

The Tories will like to dismiss these figures as fiction. Which reminds me that I'm hundreds of words into a blog and haven't yet plugged my new novel, Maya. So thinking of the characters in my books, the hero of All in the Mind lives in Chiswick. Hounslow had 11,721 unemployed in ‘92 and 5,477 now. 53% difference.

Maya, which is published on 4 February (price £18.99 from all good bookshops), has two main characters. One lives in Little Venice and the other in Hammersmith. Little Venice is in Westminster, where 12,082 were unemployed in ‘92, 5,265 now. 56% difference. 13,170 were out of work in Hammersmith and Fulham in ‘92, 5,368 now. 59% difference.

I could go on, but you've got the point. Now try clicking yourself. If you find a place where the Tories did better, vote for them. If you don't, join the club. Even better, join the Party and fight to keep the Tories out.

This is the full version of an article of which an edited version appears in today's Financial Times

Britain is at war. It does not feel like it for a population which, the young included, has its  concept of war defined largely by World War 2, with its millions of deaths, wailing sirens, bombs falling on London, ration books, and every town and village losing sons. But war it is.

It feels like it in the town of Wootton Bassett on days when bodies come home from Afghanistan and crowds line the main street to pay their respects.  But there too, most days, life goes on as normal.

Life is anything but normal for the soldiers involved in often vicious fighting, but other than when a soldier is killed, or a suicide bomber strikes, we seem to hear little of what is happening on the front line. 'The family has been informed' has become the most regularly used line in war reporting. Other topics crowd in and crowd Afghanistan from the public arena. The weather. Pre-election skirmishing. The Iraq inquiry. The Haiti earthquake. The latest celebrity frenzy.

Amid the relative quiet at home while this noisy and difficult war rages 3500 miles away, two things start to happen. One, as a country we begin to think the war is less important to our security than it is. Two, people forget its central purpose and wonder - a question heard all too often - what on earth are we doing there?

 Giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry in London last week, when asked what lessons I thought we should learn, I expressed my fear that because of the controversies surrounding the communication of the Iraq war, we had already learned the wrong lessons for our handling of Afghanistan. Political and military leaders know why we are there - there are key strategic and security issues involved. But if large members of the public do not, that is a failure of strategic communications, not military planning or execution. Despite the controversies of Iraq, I strongly believe that the job of big picture communication is more not less important. The public need for understanding is as great as ever. But the explanations are not being heard at anything like the volume they should be.

I understand why Conservative leader David Cameron, for short term political capital, says there will be no repeat of so-called 'dodgy dossiers'. But he is wrong if he thinks the public, parliamentarians or media will go back to being told decisions are made in part with the help of intelligence material without being told what it is. He should take care not to let this become one more factor in making it impossible for a future generation of leaders - including him should he become prime minister - to take difficult and controversial decisions.

If politicians constantly apologise for being in politics, if all communications is seen as spin, if much of the mass media show only the bad side of a story, and if senior military brief against the Chief of Defence Staff, their ministerial boss, and his shadow, as is happening all too regularly, it does not build the platform needed for clear and strong communications when we are at war.

So, what should we be learning instead? First, take strategic communications seriously. When I spoke at a recent Nato conference for military leaders, the generals were encouraged, if confused by the attempt to signal an exit date when none can confidently be predicted, by Barack Obama's decision to send an extra 30,000 troops. They felt they now had what they needed militarily to fight the Taliban and choke off AL Qaida at one of its main sources. But one after another, including people who have given evidence to the Iraq inquiry, they complained about poor strategic communications. They saw this as critical not just because of the risk of losing support at home, but also because of the need for clarity of purpose and objective, and indeed good morale, on the ground.

Everyone understands a military campaign must be structured and disciplined, with everyone knowing their part. It is no different for comms. In military strategy, you must make the weather. It is the same in comms. The agenda has to be set by those communicating, not those opposing or covering you.

Second, in a multinational alliance, you have to internationalise communications so that key objectives and strategies can be communicated across time zones and political systems. The Blair government's thinking on this deepened with Kosovo, when Nato forces took on Slobodan Milosevic over his attempted ‘ethnic cleansing' in 1999. We all made assumptions about Nato. It is a great brand, but personnel levels and structures made for normal times were inadequate. There came a point when President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair decided that though Nato v Belgrade might be a one-sided military contest, the PR battle was in danger of being lost by democracies with liberal media systems to a dictatorship with total control of his. There was too much answering to national, not overall interests, and military/civilian co-ordination was poor.

So we agreed a system that no major news line would be deployed without the agreement of a small media team, on behalf of their leaders. We convened twice daily international conference calls; issued no reaction to breaking news without a call to agree lines and shared access to each other's knowledge. Those systems were adapted for use after the September 11 attacks and in the Iraq war, successfully in the build-up and invasion (the controversies came later), less so in the aftermath. Military leaders in Kosovo later said it was only when these international systems of media management were in place that they could focus fully on the military mission.

It was hard to discern that co-ordinated approach in the run-up to the Afghan surge being announced, or after it. The surge should have been followed by sustained communications across the alliance. That job is not being done with the vigour and consistency that it should, and the systems of co-ordination have weakened since Iraq.

Third, there is a need for a constant focus on the strategic and security reasons for the war and on the big picture. It is not easy when our media tends to assume moral equivalence between democracy and terror/dictatorship, and the dictatorships have the inbuilt advantage of being able to say whatever they like - whether Milosevic claiming we had napalmed schools, or Chemical Ali denying Iraq had ever used chemical weapons. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein followed western media closely and used it to support his own PR campaign. In Afghanistan, the enemy will exploit any negative shifts in public opinion. In my experience, whatever the media noise, people will listen to leaders and absorb more complicated messages over time. But the arguments have to be put out there consistently.

This focus on strategic communications is even tougher in an era of the internet and 24-7 media, in which embedded reporters send only snapshots of the war and every casualty is reported as a news-leading event; the media is eager to cover "setbacks" whilst ignoring key steps forward; anyone with a computer or a camera is able to become a reporter or a commentator; there is a virtual fusion of news and comment and our enemies are sophisticated at exploiting our media, so that terror becomes our fault not their wickedness. Osama bin Laden can send a video from a cave and it is seen as genius public relations, yet when we explain why we are worried about a threat, it is denounced as spin.

But sustained and clear communication explaining why our troops are there, what they are doing day by day, week by week, and to what effect, is essential if we are to maintain the support required for a struggle that may take years to complete. This is a different kind of war. Winning requires a united international front, keeping public support, sticking to the mission despite  the setbacks - that is what strategic communications is about.

The international conference on Afghanistan, and now also Yemen, called for by prime minister Gordon Brown and due to meet in London on January 28, is welcome. What matters most is agreeing the military and political strategies going forward. How that is all then communicated should also be high up the agenda.

Accusations that this puts spin before soldiering should be ignored.  Soldiers win wars. Failure in the battle for hearts and minds can lose them. That applies equally, albeit in different ways and sometimes with different messages from the same strategy, to hearts and minds on the home front, in Afghanistan, and indeed in all countries where extremists hope that by spreading a fundamentalist view of Islam they can force out the US and its allies from engagement, a result which would render more easy the Talebanisation of those countries, with potentially devastating consequences for them and us. It is a communications problem requiring urgent fixing, but it is fixing that can, and should, be done.

I have been thinking for a while about writing something on the way so many people in politics, diplomacy and the media are rewriting history to suit their own agenda or to evade their own responsibilities. Then this morning, reading online the coverage of Geoff Hoon's evidence yesterday, I came across this piece in The Independent by Labour MP Denis MacShane, which sums it up rather well.

So, by kind permission of Denis, here is a guest blog for the day.

'Which of the many senior politicians caught in the long-running debate over the Iraq conflict said that Saddam Hussein "most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capacity" and that the now famous dossier "contains confirmation of information that we either knew or most certainly should have been willing to assume?"

Not Jack Straw nor Geoff Hoon, whose evidence to Sir John Chilcot is central to the inquiry. Not an Alastair Campbell parrot but the Right Honourable Sir Menzies Campbell MP QC, speaking in the debate in the Commons in September 2002 when the now infamous dossier was published. The point is made not to mock Ming Campbell, whose views changed as events unfolded, but as a reminder that the Chilcot Inquiry is taking an increasingly surreal turn as it discusses not the history of what happened but the contemporary passions of protagonists nearly a decade later.

Not many MPs are given the title honourable these days. Yet as Hoon showed yesterday he accepts his responsibility and does not seek to resile from his judgements. Contrast that to the top mandarins and diplomats who took every honour, school-fee, bonus, pension, and post-retirement job that the British establishment bestows upon its senior state servants. Now they suddenly discover a conscience and that all along they were worried about the Prime Minister's Iraq strategy.

None of them said so at the time. None of them resigned. None of them can produce a memo sent to Downing Street setting out objections. I sat in Jack Straw's office in the Commons as we waited for the vote that would say Yes or No to military action. Neither he nor I knew how the vote would go. Blaming Blair is fashionable. But it is the Commons that made the decision. And two years later the people handsomely re-elected the MPs who voted to topple Saddam.

No Tory will give evidence. Yet at the time the Conservatives were far more gung-ho than Blair. William Hague told the Commons in September 2002 that "400 nuclear sites and installations had been concealed in farmhouses and even schools in Iraq" and argued that "the risk of leaving the regime on its course today far outweigh the risk of taking action quite soon."

Far from Blair hoodwinking parliament, the fact is that as Saddam continued to defy UN resolutions and make impossible a full investigation by Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors there was a cross-party view that Saddam had to be dealt with.

Jack Straw has produced a memo sent a full year before the action took place. It outlines the obvious problems and pitfalls ahead. But Straw threw himself with his customary energy into securing the first UN resolution. I was his deputy at the time. Straw was a collegiate minister holding daily meetings with his team of senior officials, ministers and advisers as well as a weekly lunch for a wider group.

At none of those meetings was the slightest doubt raised that Saddam had to be tackled. No one resigned. Robin Cook and Clare Short did but too late in the day to affect policy and in the latter case only after first endorsing the invasion. Cook had chilled the Commons' blood with his descriptions of Saddam's WMD in 1998 when he launched air patrols and attacks on Iraq. I never heard him doubt then the intelligence which led him to claim Iraq had WMD.

There was also a cross-media consensus. Today the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph give full coverage to every remark at Chilcot which casts a bad light on Blair. But at the time, the Murdoch-Rothermere-Black Brothers press was rooting for war.

And what of Europe? The majority of European governments supported action. Germany was the big exception. In 1990, no one asked Germany to send troops to the first Iraq war. All Chancellor Helmut Kohl did was sign a cheque as the German constitution prohibited the expedition of German soldiers outside the country. His successor, Gerhard Schröder, changed his country's constitution to allow German soldiers to fight and die abroad. But in September 2002, in a hard-fought election against his rightist opponent, Edmund Stoiber, the social democrat Schröder found himself under pressure on Iraq. Stoiber announced he would ban US warplanes flying over Germany in the event of the war. Schröder trumped him by announcing German opposition and neutrality.

But from Portugal to Poland, from Finland to Italy, European governments either sat on their hands or expressly endorsed the Bush line even if public opinion was hostile. In 2010 the EU's political elites agree the war was a mistake. But not at the time.

Nor do people recall that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld thought Tony Blair to be an irritating, whining Brit as he argued that more time should be given to UN resolutions. With China and Russia and then in due course France threatening a veto, the chances of a UN resolution were zero just as they had been zero over Kosovo and will be zero over Iran. The UN can transform itself into the League of Nations with alacrity when it suits Moscow and Beijing and, in 2003, Paris.

I argued as Europe minister at the time that we should focus more effort on shaping a European political response but the focus was always the United States, Washington, and going to see George W Bush and Colin Powell rather than European partners. Britain's half-in, half-out approach to Europe meant that US not Europe dictated policy. As it does today.

But the invasion took place. Its aftermath we know. Osama Bin Laden and other jihadi Islamists had already undertaken terrorist attacks - the Paris Metro in 1995, the Luxor massacre in 1997 - long before anyone had heard of George W Bush or Alastair Campbell.

History will judge whether deposing Saddam Hussein was a good or bad thing. But the Chilcot inquiry should focus on what happened in 2002 and 2003. The efforts in 2010 by those who supported the intervention to re-write history have Stalin as well as Saddam laughing in their graves.

Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and was Minister of State at the Foreign Office 2002-2005

After shadow education secretary Michael Gove's barely comprehensible (especially after he 'explained' it) 'toffs for teachers' elitist schooling plan, the Tories have now turned their attention to child poverty.

According to the FT's Nick Timmins, one of the most reliable public policy journos around (sorry, I know how that will damage him but it is true) the Tories are changing indicators of deprivation so that it will become 'hard to identify or measure progress.'

That is handy I must say, as with their policies so clearly skewed towards the top end, there won't be any progress towards ending child poverty!

Mr Timmins, who wrote a seminal book on welfare, reports that the Tories will move away from income as the main measure of poverty to take in 'a matrix of measures' which build 'a richer picture.'

My God, even when they're talking about poverty, they can't get the R word out of their minds. Perhaps this should be the new slogan under the next airbrushed Cameron poster - For Richer, For Richer.

Meanwhile in the next column we learn that top Tory spin doctor Steve Hilton has sent Tory candidates on a green 're-education' programme. This follows a survey showing Tory candidates couldn't give a toss about ending the planet so long as they and their mates do really well out of a Tory government. (I paraphrase). This sits badly with Dave's admittedly superficial greening, the one that gave us a tree as a logo and a bike in the boot of the car to wheel out whenever photographers hove into view.

Meanwhile on pages 1 and 3 an altogether more sensible, mature and thought through politician in the form of Alistair Darling. Many politicians of lesser weight and resilience would have buckled in the face of the global financial crisis. Alistair has emerged as a stronger figure and whilst he may not have the charisma we keep being told the public want from their leaders, he has the calm and the character.

So when, as today, he talks about the need for spending cuts in some areas to get the deficit under control, I think most fair-minded people would rather see him taking on that task than George Osborne, who for doubtless Hilton-inspired reasons has gone a bit low profile again.

Good to see the FT putting the entire transcript of the interview on their website. With most speeches and interviews it is always good to read the whole thing, not just the bits taken out for a headline or two.

And if it is amusement you're after, get the transcript of some of Gove's interviews on toffs for teachers.

If it is serious-minded government you prefer, call for Darling.

Now come on folks, let's calm down a bit before this gay Paul Dacre thing gets out of hand.

I mean the guy's got family, and even though the boys went to Eton, where they're taught to be tough out there on the playing fields, we don't know for sure how they will cope with this.

It's ok when Die Mail goes  for me, because I'm used to it and I've got a thick skin and a sense of humour.

Paulipoos has neither. The lack of thick skin explains why he never puts his head above the parapet to defend his evil paper and its lying campaigns against anything that is decent and good in Britain. The lack of humour is reported by all who work under him. Not a barrel of laughs.

So I am just issuing a warning that he might not be able to cope too well if he sees the video doing the rounds on Youtube which seems to have been inspired by my Dacre blog last week. You may remember I reported the view of a psychologist that  Obergruppenfuehrer Dacre's hate-filled coverage of me is driven by the homoerotic grip I might have on his fantasies.

Now look, I was just being a bit light-hearted about one of the most evil men in Britain. But to take this, as someone has done, and set it to a scene from Downfall, with Dacre as Hitler, and subtitles suggesting his hate, and all the viciousness in his paper, is born of his unrequited love for me, takes it a bit far.

Still, it is funny, and so you can make your own minds up, I feel I should allow you to see it here, and then pass it on to your friends.

Hate Mail. Be proud of it.

We only get The Observer on a Sunday, and I fear that Gaby Hinsliff and Nick Cohen will be going into hiding after their articles today. Sorry, but you just can't say these things!!

Ms Hinsliff has written what even my other half (who is used to reading unpleasant things about me) has described as a very friendly, quite flattering and insightful profile of me. In the media village, let us admit the truth here, one is not allowed to write friendly, flaterring or insightful things about me. One is only allowed to state and restate a negative view, because that is the game those in the village like to play.

If the reaction of the people at Old Trafford yesterday is anything to go by, and I do not just mean fellow Burnley supporters, then the negativity with which the press and TV sought to coat my evidence to the Iraq inquiry appears not to have got through. Media opinion and public opinion should never be confused. 'We hate the papers as much as you do,' one said. 'Cos they never write about us unless we're in trouble.' But I would like above all to record the comment of a woman who stopped me as we were leaving the ground, who said her son was in the Army, she was incredibly proud of what he did in Iraq, and is now about to do in Afghanistan, and glad that someone had stood up for what we did.

There were similar if less emotional reactions as I made my way out through the United fans too. I got one hostile comment all day, and that was about football.

In an attempt to help restore Ms Hinsliff in the eyes of the negative media majority, I should say there are a number of points I could rebut, but only one that I want to. As she says, I have a novel to sell in two weeks' time so I must correct her when she says my first novel, All In The Mind, got 'stinking reviews.' I think if she had inserted 'one or two' before 'stinking', that would have been accurate.

But I am sitting here looking at the back cover of Maya, my new book, complete with a loving front cover endorsement from Piers Morgan, which has a collection of superb reviews for All In The Mind. Even the ghastly Mail on Scumday is on there with 'eloquent and touching ... a triumphant exploration of the imperfection of heroism.'

From The Financial Times to the Irish Times, the Times to the TLS, the Mirror to the Guardian and the Indepedent, there are reviews that most first time authors would give their right hand for. Maya plug of the day over.

As for Nick Cohen, he has written a piece seeking to draw attention to the conspiracy theorising that surrounds so much of the debate about Iraq. Cohen has written consistently on this theme for some time. People say they want the truth, but so many of the critics and conspiracy theorists only want those parts of the truth that fit their criticism or their conspiracy theory.

Whilst in rebuttal mode, I should like to say something about a story in The Sunday Telegraph - no we don't get it but Sky and the BBC called me about it last night so I looked it up online - which says I was 'forced to clarify' my evidence to the inquiry.

I wasn't forced to do anything. I decided to send a note to the inquiry, because I felt the transcript as sent to me for authentification risked giving a wrong impression.

The conspiracy theorists are already out commenting, but for the record, and trusting to the fair-mindedness of most of the people who come on here, I paste below both the exchange in question, and the addendum which is now on the inquiry website. The exchange relates to the foreword of the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's WMD.

SIR RODERIC LYNE:  So you certainly still stand by the words "beyond doubt"?

MR ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:  I do, because at the time that was the judgment that he was led to make.  I would also stand by -- I know that the Butler Report felt that it overstated things, to talk about "extensive" and    "detailed", and so forth, and "authoritative".  I stand by that as well, because I think the document had the      full authority of the Joint Intelligence Committee.  It was detailed, and it wasn't just about the intelligence       that had come in in the last couple of days and I think  some of the caveats were in there. You could certainly make the point, as both you and Sir Lawrence have now done, that there could have been more in terms of the public presentation, putting over the case about why those caveats were important, but I think, ultimately, in terms of what the public would have taken out of it, it wouldn't have made that much difference, because it was a cautiously put case.

SIR RODERIC LYNE:  So if the JIC assessments, when we are able, perhaps -- I don't know if we will be able to publish them, but certainly re-read them -- were not to correspond to the phrase "beyond doubt", and if members of the JIC -- and we have already heard somebody who did serve on the JIC, Sir William Ehrman -- were to say that "beyond doubt" was not a phrase that was justifiable, would you at that stage say that Parliament had been misled by the Prime Minister saying "beyond doubt"?

MR ALASTAIR CAMPBELL:  No, I wouldn't.

SIR RODERIC LYNE:  You wouldn't?  Okay.  Thank you.

The note I sent to the inquiry after reading the transcript is as follows.

• 'My answer at page 9 line 20 of the afternoon session. Reading the transcript, it would appear that I am saying it would not matter if it transpired that JIC members had made clear at the time of the assessments, and in the preparation of his presentation of the September dossier to Parliament, that the Prime Minister was not entitled to make a judgement that the claims being made on WMD, in the relevant sentence from the foreword Sir Roderic Lyne read to me, were ‘beyond doubt.' That is clearly not correct. Indeed I say elsewhere in my evidence that if Sir John Scarlett had said to the Prime Minister that he could not make the claims he did about WMD, the Prime Minister would have accepted that without question. I thought I was being asked whether, if it was not stated in the JIC assessments that the case as put by the Prime Minister was ‘beyond doubt', would that mean he had misled Parliament? The reason I said ‘No, it wouldn't' is because, as I stated elsewhere in evidence, the PM would be entitled to make the judgement he did based on the assessments he saw and had had explained to him, and those words did not have to be in the assessments for him to make that statement. Reading the bald words on the page gives the wrong impression of what I was saying in response to what I thought I was being asked in a question which contained a number of points in parantheses, and I would be grateful of the opportunity to make that clear to the committee.'

There you go. I accept I could have tried to make the first sentence shorter, but I am writing this for the inquiry team, not a bunch of hacks likely to twist what it says regardless. Rebuttal over. First sunshine for ages out there, so the bike beckons. My weekly AOL blog on Burnley's heroics at Manchester United, and Fergie's wild claims to have dominated a match we should have won 4-3, will be posted shortly.

And thanks to Trevor Malcolm for advertising the Amazon rate for Maya. Oh, is that another plug?

A friend of ours is a member of Bafta and so gets all the films up for awards.

We have been lucky enough to see about a dozen in recent weeks, from Up In The Air (I liked it, Fiona loved it) to Funny People (Adam Sandler is a very funny person), Brothers (strong) to My Lovely Bones (scary).

Last night we had my winner though, for what awards I don't know, but for as many as possible.

I speak of Invictus, the story of Nelson Mandela's harnessing of rugby to his attempts to reconcile the nation he led after decades of hatreds and division caused by the evil of apartheid.

It focuses in large part on his relationship with Springbok captain Francois Piennar. Morgan Freeman is brilliant as Mandela, Matt Damon brilliant as Piennar.

It cannot be easy playing a living legend, especially one as universally known and loved as Mandela.

Director Clint Eastwood and his team certainly did their homework. There is a scene where Mandela is writing a note. It brought back one of the most vivid memories of the several occasions on which I was privileged enough to be in his presence. I asked him to sign a book for Monica Prentice, a Number 10 messenger, one of the few black people in Downing Street, a lovely woman who adored Mandela. I normally resisted the naffery of asking the Mandelas and Clintons of this world for autographs and memorabilia but I was determined to do it for Monica.

As the official NM-TB meeting in Cape Town broke up, I produced 'Long Walk to Freedom' and rather sheepishly asked the great man to sign it. He was already on his feet, but slowly sat down again, took out a pen, opened the book, and very slowly, in handwriting that came back to me last night, began to write 'To Monica.' This was around the time of Bill Clinton's impeachment problems and he stopped on the n of Monica, looked up at me and said 'not THE Monica I trust.'

He has a wicked sense of humour, which comes through in the film. But so does his insight that sport can be both a healer and an inspirer of men and nations. Rugby was the white man's sport, and he meets resistance to his attempts to get the majority black population to get behind the Springboks. Likewise Piennar, whose leadership skills are spotted and exploited by Mandela, faces resistance from white players who continue to see democracy as a step too far.

But they both break down the resistance by leading through example. Piennar visits Mandela's cell on Robben Island and though Damon utters not a word, you can sense him feeling like he is walking in Mandela's shoes.

The final scenes, in which a nation comes together in celebration of a World Cup victory whose planning obsessed the President, are on a par with the climax of Chariots of Fire, my favourite sports movie ever.

We see white and black bodyguards embracing for the first time, and I love the scene where white cops on duty outside the stadium lift a young township kid high in the air, just as Piennar is raising the trophy. Not a dry eye time.

Fiona thought there was too much rugby in the later stages of the film and not enough Mandela-Piennar relationship. But the rugby scenes are beautifully shot, realistic - Damon has clearly learned about the game - and captures the intensity of elite sport, and its impact upon players and supporters, really well. So even if you're one of those poor unfortunates who hate sport, this is a wonderful wonderful film, with great acting and lovely music, and I defy anyone not to enjoy and be moved by it.

Ps, Matt Damon gets a mention in Maya, my new novel out shortly about an A-list movie star and how fame changes her life and the lives of those around here. Did I mention I had a novel out soon? You can order on Amazon. These plugs will get more shameless as publication date nears. Piers Morgan says on the front cover that it is a superb read, and who can argue with Simon Cowell's Number 2? Or is it 3?

As those of you who follow me on Twitter and Facebook will know, on Wednesday I had a call from a behavioural psychologist, to tell me he had come to the conclusion that Obergruppenfuehrer Paul Dacre is secretly in love with me.

My tweet on this led to a few complaints about the Nazi terminology,  one or two saying it was unfair on Dacre, more suggesting that it was unfair on the Nazis, which even I thought was just a bit ott. Just a bit.

So as a compromise position, I will for this much gentler, touchier-feelier blog make him a mere Kommandant of Die Mail (those last two words have a ring to them).

The psychologist, who was terribly serious by the way, felt it was highly likely that I figure in homoerotic fantasies which fill Dacre with terrible shame and guilt. There can be no other explanation, he said, for the scale of hatred expressed in his coverage of me over many years, which had another mini-Nagasaki explosion when I gave evidence to the Iraq inquiry on Tuesday.

I hardly knew what to say about my psychologist friend's call, but as I tweeted, I did feel a rare if passing moment of sympathy for this most hideous man. Poor poor Obergruppenfuehrer, I said (this was pre-Kommandant phase).

It's flattering to have people imagine that I might be appreciated sexually, particularly as I go on down the back nine of life. But just as I don't do God, I don't do male. And I certainly don't do Mail scum. So, Paul Dacre, whatever is going on inside that troubled head as you toss and turn alongside your poor wife sleeping gently besides you, I am sorry, it is time for me to be frank with you - it can never be.

Occasionally my path crosses with apologetic Mail hacks (they usually quote the 'only obeying orders' Nuremberg defence for the stuff they write) who want to tell me chapter and verse about Dacre's regime and his bouts of obsession with me. You can probably guess the sort of thing, but it must be said he seems to talk about me a lot, given I left Downing Street more than six years ago. .

It was a well-known Mail columnist who first told me he thought Dacre harboured a furtive passion for me, and because it is not returned, and he can never admit it, he must lash out. He compared it to 'the jealousy of the lonely public school fag who dreams of silent visits to the dorm, realises he can never catch the eye of the prefect, and becomes first lovingly bitter, then bitterly enraged, then out for vengeance. Hell hath no fury like a fag scorned, apparently.'

If you look at the content of Die Mail (part of my job when I worked for TB, but it's not allowed in the house now, in common wiith dogshit) you can see Dacre's inner psyche screaming out from page after page. Just as good football teams reflect the character of the man at the top, so do evil newspapers. I¹ve always imagined all the rage and angst and the scratching and the boils on his back must be because of some deep discontent within.

But could it be, no, surely not, that it is all about confused feelings of sexuality? And about me? Gott im Himmel!!

There's also that old saying about birds of a feather flocking together. I'm not saying that everyone at Die Mail is secretly in love with me. But look at the man I described on Tuesday as the faux posh tosser, Peter Oborne, who was drivelling away outside the QE2 in a vest and an old jacket. Also on the payroll of Die Mail, he was ostensibly there to cover the inquiry, but my psychologist friend wondered whether he was not there just to catch a glimpse of me. He was dressed for play, not work.

This is the Oborne who in earlier life wrote a book about me, in which many Mills and Boon flashes were shown - he described me as 'a tall, commanding, well-built man, ruggedly good-looking.' Also 'he possessed that sexual confidence that some men have who know how to please women. He was very good-looking in a dangerous sort of way.' Well, well, well, we wonder, dangerous to whom? Him? Dacre? The quaint looking Quentin Quetts who had me (not in that way) fairly high up the list in his book on the people who 'buggered up Britain?' Interesting choice of word Quents. Something on your mind?

When Oborne was writing his soft porn about me, he was on the Express, but tried to flog his book to Die Mail, a move the Express blocked, saying he had to serialise it in his own paper. This drove the Kommandant into boil-erupting, shoulder-scratching rage. He ordered a team of hacks to put together a 'book' (it never got published because it didn't really exist) so they could run a spoiler - 'the real Alastair Campbell' story.

Day One included the revelation that the transforming event of my life was the death of my father in an accident when I was a child. This came as news to my Dad, then alive and well and living in retirement. Banged to rights as they say. Apology next day, and a nice cheque with which we bought new gates and playground equipment for the kids' primary school. (The only thing Dacre has ever done for State schools by the way. He chose Eton for his own kids -  where else for the voice of middle England he claims to represent?)

I caught sight of Die Mail's front page on Wednesday in the newsagent and when I  saw the splash headline -'Shameless unrepentant and still lying,' I assumed they were running an advert for themselves. It turned out to be a missive to me from my repressed secret admirer. Paulipoos my poppet, I know you love me. Scream it more gently and I might listen.

So, if I may adopt that well-known question mark journalism so beloved by Dacre and his many minions - could he be hiding something? Is there a guilty secret that only he knows about?

One that he dare not tell even Oborne, his fellow erotically charged obsessive who broods about the 'dangerous' attraction he sees in me?

Why does Dacre never show his face in public? Does he fear there are people out there who might recognise him, and what they might say about what they know?

And if the guilty secret were secret no more, does Dacre perhaps fear the kind of condemnation he metes out to others? How can we know when the man is so secretive about his own life whilst being so prurient and inquisitive about the lives of others?

I'm sure we all remember the recent post-death character assassination of Stephen Gately by Die Mail's Jan Moir.

As I said at the time, nothing goes in that paper without Dacre's support and say so. If there is any homophobia in there, it is his. And who knows where it comes from? But if I have added to his derangement, I think I should just add this to my list of public service achievements, whilst simultaneously (with Mind Champion of the Year hat on), telling him if he needs help and counselling, thanks to Labour there is more of it now available.

In my new novel (no, you're right, there is nowhere I can't plug it with only two weeks to go) movie star Maya's agent talks about 'the Harold Shipman treatment' being meted out to a me mber of the public who dared to accuse Maya of attacking him.

I didn't see Die Mail beyond the headline, but I gather it  was in that mould. Piers Morgan sent me a text suggesting Idi Amin came off lightly by comparison. (He has given me the front cover endorsement for the novel by the way - Piers, that is, not Idi Amin).

People ask why I don't get angry about Die Mail's coverage. Partly because it is beyond parody. But mainly because now I realise that, to quote Oscar Wilde (oh how Dacre would have relished covering him in his pomp) it is all just a manifestation of the love that dare not speak its name. I can come to terms with this. But can Paulipoos? I think we should be told.

Now that things have calmed a bit after the frenzy of Tuesday, normal political service resumed here, with a reminder that there are only two parties in this country capable of forming a government, so that the big choice on the agenda is whether we want Labour or the Tories in power, Gordon Brown or David Cameron in charge.

Lots of comments yesterday that the blog was unusually long, so I thought I'd make today's unusually short and give you a few thoughts I recorded in the back garden the other day when I was taking a break from preparations.

Meanwhile I may be back later developing on the theme of last night's tweet about Paul Dacre allegedly being in love with me and possessed of homoerotic fantasies, as many right wing extremists appear to be.

Welcome back to Brian Laws as Burnley's new manager. I say welcome back because Brian is a former player.

Fair to say Owen Coyle's departure to Bolton was like a kick in the guts of a lot of Burnley fans but chairman Barry Kilby and fellow board member Brendan Flood have moved quickly to fill the gap. I made a video reflecting on Coyle's leaving, but didn't get a chance to put it up because I was preparing for the Iraq inquiry. So this blog continues after these messages:

I welcome the Laws appointment and am glad it has been made in time for the little matter of the visit to Manchester United on Saturday as we seek to do the double on them! I am also thrilled Graham Alexander is stepping up to be coach as well as player. The departure of first team coach Steve Davis, a real Burnley legend, was for many an even bigger gut-kicker than Owen Coyle going. ‘Grezza', the oldest outfield player in the Premier League, and one of the fittest, is rapidly developing legend status too and this will add to it.

There was an embarrassing moment yesterday when a text pinged in on my phone as I sat down to give evidence in one of my sessions at the Iraq inquiry. It was a voicemail message from one of the managers whose brains I had been picking for Barry and Brendan on the various names that had moved in and out of the frame in recent days.
It is no secret Shaun O'Driscoll was really fancied and clearly the top names in football management see him as someone who will be a Premier League manager one day. But I know Barry and Brendan felt Brian Laws, in addition to knowing the club and the area as well as he does, edges it on experience. They are also hard-headed users of stats and I know they did a pretty rigorous assessment of Brian Laws' results set alongside the relative budgets his clubs had. Yes he has known relegation but he has known it from the perspective of being starved of funds.

Lots of people have been asking why they didn't go for an Alan Curbishley or a Steve Coppell. They were not options, for different reasons. It is also worth remembering that the management team that decided on Laws is the one which did the same kind of tough assessment on all available talent before taking the risk of going for Owen Coyle. So I am happy to trust their judgement and urge all Burnley fans to welcome Brian Laws and give him real support.
We will troop to Old Trafford knowing it will be a tough contest, followed by Liverpool in the Cup, Coyle's Bolton away, then Chelsea. That is one hell of a tough start. But it reminds me of the tough start we had to the season. This is our season starting all over again.

First of all thanks to the friends and also total strangers who offered support in various ways yesterday, not least across the web.

Fair to say there was loads of the usual abuse that comes whenever anyone goes out and defends British policy on Iraq, but there was also a big expression of the counter view, which rarely gets airtime but which is there nonetheless. The Labour Party's media monitoring department also told me that even on the main websites normally totally hostile there was a good smattering of support.

Among the private messages I got in advance were some from former Iraqi exiles I mentioned in my evidence, some of whom are now back in Iraq and say despite all the problems their country without Saddam is a better place and one where democracy is beginning alongside, by their standards, normal life.

I am amazed too how many people, though they know I don't do God, sent me passages from the Bible. As I walked through the media scrum on the way in, and on the way out, and listened to some of the overblown and agenda driven commentary, I was glad to have read in the morning an email with Psalm 56 attached ... 'What can mortal man do to me?' it asks 'All day long they twist my words, they are always plotting to harm me. They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, eager to take my life...' I never detected a death plot among the British media, but the rest of it sums up the Westminster lobby to a tee.

And no, I'm still not doing God, but as Neil Kinnock once said to me, I sometimes think it's a shame we're atheists, because some of the best lines are in the good book.

It was my fourth Iraq-related inquiry, after the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry into 'the case for war,' the Intelligence and Security Committee on the use of intelligence, and the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly.

This one was in many ways harder to prepare for, partly because of the passage of time, partly because I am no longer in government, though I did have access to papers when preparing, but mainly because though I had been given some indication of the areas to be covered, I knew I could and in all probability would be asked about anything and everything.

I was well served by the Cabinet Office team which is in charge of the archive, and spent part of the Christmas break reading official papers. But a combination of man flu and the feeling at times of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume means I did most of my preparation at home. The inquiry website was a huge help in that I could read the evidence of previous witnesses, which helped not only with memory but also with deciding which papers it would then be helpful to see. Then finally I compiled a list of main points I wanted to make, and a detailed chronological narrative.

My book was helpful too, in that there were reflections and detail in there - as was clear from the questioning - which was not necessarily in the archive. The defence chiefs' early emphasis on aftermath planning, for example, my exchanges with Ambassador Bremer about the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, also specific observations made by Tony Blair and other leaders and ministers at key moments.

There were several references in my diary too to private notes sent by TB to George Bush, so why on earth the media were presenting this as some great new revelation says more about their addiction to the whooshery of 'breaking news' journalism than it does about the diplomatic exchanges at the time. A quick flick through last night took me to Page 684. Bear with me.

TB was working on a long note for Bush on the plane, and I left him to it and had a long chat with Jack, going through all the difficult areas. He was worried just how far out on a limb TB was pushing himself, but was still totally on board for where we were. The main message in TB's note, when you boiled it down, was that there was a lot of support for the aims of the campaign, and we totally believed the policy was right, but there was real concern at the way the US put over their views and intentions, and that rested in people's fears about their perceived unilateralism. It was a long and detailed note, going through all the difficult issues and questions, but that was the blunt political message in there. He was urging him to do more to rebuild with Germany, then Russia, then France, and saying he should seize the moment for a new global agenda, one to unite the world rather than divide it. He said that a distorted view of the US was clouding everything - look at how much cynicism there was at their efforts in the Middle East. We had to break that down. Why had Mexico and Chile gone the other way? Why did so much of Europe? It was about other things too. In the end he wrote a 12 page note that was both subtle and blunt at the same time. It was a good piece of work and if Bush took it on board would have a good effect.

Then on the next day

GWB had clearly read TB's note and was going through it virtually line by line. He was fairly strong on MEPP. He said he knew there would have to be a reckoning in their relationships with others. He was on pretty confident form. He seemed a lot more on top of the detail and in the discussion on the complexities of the Arab world seemed less one dimensional than before. TB's note was fairly detached but saying that in essence the US had a choice about what it wanted to do with its power. They had to face up to that choice. The power was a given but how it was used was a series of choices.

There are plenty of other references. I assume all these people parading as experts on me, on TB, on Iraq, have read The Blair Years. Quite a useful source I'd have thought. If not, it is still available in all good book shops and online. Oh, and I will shortly be launching a scheme to use the diaries to raise funds for the Labour Party.

I also caught some of the discussion about the 'revelation' that TB spoke regularly to GB about Iraq policy. The commentary on this was even more ludicrous. GB was chancellor at the time, you may recall. He was a member of the war cabinet. Again, The Blair Years records a morning when he takes me aside to complain about the way TB allowed ministers to drone on too much and show division in front of the military.

I caught one BBC guy saying there were serious electoral implications from me saying GB supported the policy. 'Prime minister who was member of war cabinet at time of invasion supported invasion'. Shock horror. Not.

I would also point out that every aspect of this controversial decision had been played out at great volume and in great detail prior to the 2005 election, which we won comfortably.

I have always believed - on this and on most parts of the Labour record - that if we are strong and confident in defending the decisions made, and promoting the benefits that flowed from them, all the while clear that perfection never comes and mistakes can be made, that is an essential component of a winning strategy going forward.

A small point to clear up. You may have seen my phone pinged with a text when I sat down for the second session. I had remembered to turn it off at the start of the day, but forgot to do so again after using it in the break. Sir Lawrie Freedman asked if it was TB. It wasn't. It was a football manager who has been feeding in a few thoughts to assist Burnley in the search for a new manager. Not Sir Alex, though he has been helpful as he always is to other clubs in the kind of difficulty you get into when a manager walks out mid-season. Amid his help, mind, has been the occasional reminder that we are playing United on Saturday, Burnley haven't got a manager and his lot have gone to Qatar to prepare because it's too cold at Carrington! How the other half live.

I will give the papers a miss today, knowing that most will follow their own agenda pretty much regardless of anything said yesterday, and I didn't see the news last night because we went to see The Misanthrope. I loved it. Bit of a split in the family about Keira Knightley but I thought she and Damian Lewis were terrific. And I could not help thinking that she would be good as Maya, the heroine of my novel out in a few weeks. A couple of film-makers have already expressed an interest and I would ask them to note this match made in heaven. Kate W would be good too, mind. And can Penelope Cruz do a passable West London lower middle class accent that changes with fame? Maybe not. Hardback copy in the post to Keira.

Thanks again to the friends and foes alike who helped yesterday go by, with a special word for Mark Bennett, my former assistant in Number 10 and later at the Labour party, who put together that big blue briefing folder you may have seen, and my son Rory who made sure I didn't leave it anywhere and kept me amused and calm during the breaks. I'd been expecting one break, not the three that materialised in a longer session than anticipated. But I feel I made the points I wanted to, and I hope I helped the inquiry with its continuing research and analysis.

As Gordon Brown explains to Labour MPs how he believes they can still fight and win the next election, can I report the outcome of another less high profile - but ultimately successful - campaign.

It was the campaign to get the Speaker's Conference on access to politics and Parliament to recommend removing a discriminatory piece of legislation which states that MPs cannot be barred from office on grounds of physical health, but can be so barred if they are detained under the Mental Health Act.

64. We believe that s141 of the 1983 Mental Health Act is unnecessary and damaging. It embodies attitudes which stigmatise and sap the confidence of people with mental illness. Section 141 should be repealed as soon as practicable. (Paragraph 327)

Amen to that. As the law stands, an MP could be a coma, incapable of speech or thought, after a stroke or accident say, and with no likelihood of recovery. But there is nothing in law that bars that person from continuing to be an MP. But if the same MP undergoes sustained treatment for a serious mental illness, they can be booted out of the Commons.

It won't surprise you to know that this piece of legislation has never been used. Which is why when, along with Rethink, I gave evidence to the Speaker's Conference, we argued that its removal from the Statute Book would be a symbolic but important anti-discriminatory move. I am pleased that they have called for it to be made in such clear terms, and now hope the government takes the relatively simple step of making it happen, again as recommended by the Conference. If there is no time between now and an election, then Labour and the other parties ought also to be able to find a line in their manifestoes to make this pledge.

If one in four of us will at some time struggle with mental illness, why should our MPs be any different? It is simply wrong to assume that someone who had a mental health problem can't get better and still do a demanding job, like the former Norwegian PM who had serious depression, took time off, came back and got re-elected.

Sometimes symbolic change can be emblematic of deeper change taking place and I hope that this shift on Section 141 signals a deeper change going on in British society about attitudes to mental health, the talent stifled, and the opportunities denied as a result of discrimination caused by stigma and taboo.

The election of course will be fought on issues other than this. Despite last week's kerfuffle over the Hoon-Hewitt letter, I agree with the analysis being put to MPs today that the election is not over, and that whilst the Tories are still ahead in the polls, with a lot of political and economic factors to their advantage, they can still be beaten.

It requires however all ministers and MPs to believe that, act like they believe it, then get on with the fight.

Thank heavens for a voice of sense and reason in the debate about so-called 'class war.' The shame is it is not a Cabinet minister's voice, but that of journalist Will Hutton in The Observer. It is welcome nonetheless.

Let us track back a bit. At a time Labour were drawing blood on inheritance tax, and Zac Goldsmith was causing his party trouble over his non-dom status, GB suggested to Cameron at PMQs that his tax policies were drawn up on the playing fields of Eton.

It was evident from Cameron's face that he hated it. It was clear from the faces behind that they shared the hurt.

Inflicting political pain on your opponents is part of the job of politicians. Deflecting it is another part.

The Tories went immediately into 'this is class war' as a tactic in that perfectly legitimate act of deflection. Most in the media chimed along, partly because they realised it was a story, but also because as Will Hutton points out, most senior journalists send their kids to private schools, and do not want a real debate about the consequences of their choices. Far easier then to say it is a misguided political tactic by a flailing political leader.

Will Hutton's article today makes the blindingly obvious point that whether we like it or not, class does indeed still matter, and that it is not remotely anti-aspirational to point that out, or to point out the social and economic consequences of inherent unfairness in a class system in which private education plays such an important part.

That is the argument Labour should have engaged in after the GB-DC exchange. Instead, they allowed the Tories and the papers to get them onto the back foot, inhale the false interpretation being put upon the exchange, with ministers briefing that they disapproved of this anti-aspirational strategy. As the rumbles went on, Gordon went along the concessionary route, saying it was a joke. Indeed it was, but one with a very serious point.

Nobody is saying Cameron is unfit to be PM because he went to Eton. But when his background dictates his policy agenda - and on the table at the time were two policy positions absolutely rooted in privilege - it is a perfectly legitimate attack to mount. And when Cameron tries to portray himself as having a real understanding of how people live their lives, his background and lifestyle are relevant to that debate too.

The best conference speech Tony Blair made, in my view, was the one aimed at the 'forces of conservatism,' saying they were the barriers holding people and Britain back. Because the vehement reaction unsettled some people in the party, we backed off a little as the debate unfolded. Labour ministers are doing the same now, by accepting the premise that it is class war, when all it is is pointing out that class and privilege are still reasons why Britain is not the country it can be, and that a Tory government risks reversing what progress there has been towards genuine meritocracy.

Will Hutton writes of the report Alan Milburn published on social mobility and describes its findings - on the link between private education and top jobs - as 'lethal.' If we really believed in aspiration, we would worry more about that than fraudulent claims that saying someone went to Eton is a sign of class war.

And as a footnote, I don't remember any charges of class war when all the Tory toffs were calling former Speaker Michael Martin 'Gorbals Mick.'

What on earth is the fuss about? So David Cameron's picture has been airbrushed so that the forehead looks baby-bottom smooth as drivers look away from the snowy roads to see DC looking down from poster sites around Britain.

As I have explained in a little video just uploaded on Youtube, there is a tradition of airbrushing photos on posters that goes beyond just doing it to models. Indeed, I have to say that the airbrushed poster I have talked about is one of my favourite posters of all time. And I hope when you see it you will agree that just as it fitted a central message for the 2001 campaign, it kind of works for now as well.

What an odd week. The Tories have a great big campaign launch, all bells and whistles and airbrushed babybottoms, which goes a bit kaput because of Dave's ignorance about his own marriage tax policy, GB splatters him at PMQs, then the Hoon-Hewitt letter and the subsequent kerfuffle rather detracts from all that.

Meanwhile the weather ruins a week in which I had been looking forward more and more with each day to Burnley v Stoke, after the appalling decision of Owen Coyle to walk away from the club that gave him the chance of top level football management. With the game off, I have a bit of time on my hands. Hence the vid. Hope you enjoy being reminded of the poster or, if you never saw it at the time, seeing it again.

When the Tories were slowly imploding in the run up to our first landslide victory in 1997, former minister Alan Clark called me to bemoan his party's fate.

As my diaries show, this fellow diarist phoned me rather a lot, more than his party whips and apparatchiks appreciated. He loved 'the game,' as he called it. He loved gossip. And he loved telling me how bad things were and how well we - his enemy - were doing.

On this particular occasion, he said that the problem was that the Tories now hated each other more than they hated Labour. It was an interesting insight, and one which helped us then pile on the agony for the Tories as their divisions, particularly over Europe, deepened.

Last night I was reminded of this by someone who put a message on my Facebook page that Labour was now in the same state, that we hated each other more than we hated the Tories. But whereas Alan Clark was right, my Facebook friend is wrong.

There are always disagreements and personality clashes within any major organisation. Why should a political party be different to a bank, an office, a newsroom, a football team, a charity?

But hatred is a strong word. I think Alan's definition of the strength of feeling back then did indeed define many of the relationships at all levels of the Tory Party. It defined what mainstream members of the Labour Party felt about the hard left in the days of Militant, and what Militant felt about us in spades. But it does not actually define Labour today.

Now hatred is not a terribly good or edifying thing anyway, but in so far as the vast bulk of Labour activists have it within them, I have no doubt much more of it is felt for the Tories than for anyone in their own ranks. And that feeling was growing, and turning itself into greater support and activism, as the prospect of a Tory government neared, both in terms of polls and, now in the fifth year of the Parliament, in terms of timing.

I don't hate David Cameron. I just don't think he would be a very good Prime Minister. I don't think his party has changed fundamentally from the one rejected by the public. I don't think he has the strength in depth required for a government. I don't think he has done the policy and strategic work needed. I think he thinks the Tories are born to rule, it is their turn, his time, and that's that. And I think his policy agenda, in so far as he has one, is one aimed at helping those at the top, those from his own kind of background and despite all the tieless photocalls and the 'fings just ain't right' elf'n'safety, get down with the peoplespeak, he is a pretty traditional Tory toff.

That sense was gaining wider traction, and was one of the reasons he was not pulling away in the polls, despite all the obvious economic and political advantages the Tories have, and despite all the money being thrown from Belize to help them. It was one of the reasons morale among Labour supporters was beginning to rise, and why there seems to be so much anger, whatever people feel about Gordon Brown, about the move against him yesterday. The timing was spectacularly bad.

No leader ever commands total support. True. Gordon is not the most popular or charismatic leader in the world. True. There are differences of opinion over the PBR, and the strategy Labour should adopt for the election. Clearly. And those who say that Gordon knows all about gunning for the leader, and making life more difficult than it might otherwise have been for those working for the leader, might also have a point.

But none of it should get in the way of united and determined efforts in answering the basic question - would you rather have Brown or Cameron as PM?

If Cabinet ministers want him to go, they should tell him. If he doesn't think he should, they should then decide whether they want to continue, and he should decide whether he wants to keep them. If an MP thinks he is such a liability they cannot serve under him, they should think about giving up their seat. But above all, if people have nothing useful to say, best to say nothing.

It is a dictum by which, I am glad to say, Alan Clark never lived. He and many other Tories at the time. It is one of the reasons he never quite made it as high as he thought his talents should have taken him. And why the Tories have been out of power for so long.

I've been really busy all day on various things and have only just caught up with the coverage of the Hoon-Hewitt 'initiative'.

Fair to say the news I caught was a bit of a disaster for the party, after what has been a better than expected start to the year in terms of getting stuck in a bit more to the Tories. It has also had the inevitable effect of making people come out and state their support for GB, somewhat defeating the object I'd have thought. I've seen the wave of support for GB on Twitter and Facebook from Labour activists, and it has been very encouraging.

If it was a plot, it did not appear to be a very deep one. Anyway, am too tired to be blogging this time of night, so I will leave the last word to John Prescott, who has made a YouTube vlog on the subject.

I have done a longish piece on Owen Coyle's departure for AOL's Football Fanhouse on http://www.football.fanhouse.co.uk Here are a few extracts for those who don't really care as much as I and - judging from the phone-ins and message boards - many others do.

'I cannot say I am surprised he has gone. As I said on Saturday, the bookies rarely get the big managerial calls wrong, not 5-2 odds on, take no more bets wrong at any rate. The minute Coyle became the runaway favourite, you sensed it was only a matter of time. There was also the odd business of him not facing the media after the match on Saturday.

... So though I am not surprised that he's going, I am surprised that he wants to.

... England cricketer Jimmy Anderson summed it up rather well in an incredulous sounding tweet from South Africa. 'Leaving Burnley for Bolton?' It is not just Burnley people like Jimmy who will be asking that.

... Yes, it is a bigger club. But not that much bigger, which is why a lot of football people are seeing it as a sideways move.

... It is true that Coyle did a lot for Burnley. But Burnley did a lot for Coyle. And I hope they hang tough on the compensation package, someone seemingly having jumped the gun in claiming it had been agreed before last night's meeting.

... If he had stayed at Burnley, and we had gone down despite all his efforts, his reputation would still have been strong and he would still have been in the running for bigger jobs. But if he fails to keep Bolton up, it will be a reputational blow. And if he cements them as a mid-table Premier League club, he is in reputational limbo.

... The reason people feel so disappointed today is precisely because he seemed like a cut above the average football manager. He seemed to get just how much this club meant to the town.

... The adventure is still on, and the memories are still there. But it is very sad that someone who was so key to it has disappeared down the road.

.... Meanwhile, Bolton v Burnley at the Reebok two weeks from today could be one of the hottest games of a season already packed with them.

The Tories put a lot of planning into the launch of their New Year campaigning. Big setpiece speeches by the leader, press ads, posters with what look like an airbrushed David Cameron. The slogan 'things can't go on like this'  reminded me of their not so successful 'are you thinking what we're thinking?' from the last election. Both will have walked straight out of focus group chattology. But trying to make Cameron sound like a caricature of a cabbie - rewind to his recent elf'n'safety speech - is not going to work. 'Fings can't go on like this ...' It is just one more way of saying 'time for a change' which is pretty much what their strategy amounts to.

But no matter how much planning you do, unless you have thought through the answers to all the obvious questions you're going to face, then the plans can quickly come unstuck.

The Tories have been talking in vague, waffly terms about recognising marriage within the tax system for ages. They have also been avoiding real scrutiny for ages. But it was always going to come one day. You can't just walk into power because the other lot have been there a long time. The surprise is not that they fell apart over it yesterday, but that it happened so quickly once the scrutiny began.

It happened because Labour, who do not have the cash for New Year poster and press blitzes, put together a very old-fashioned type of document based on the old-fashioned idea that if an opposition politician tells an audience of his or her intentions, then the other side are entitled to cost them.

And having produced Cameron's first wobble of the year with such a simple exercise, Labour must now keep on pressing in the same way. It took time before the Tories' inheritance tax plans became a liability for Cameron. But it did, because it was not thought through at the strategic level. It took time for the marriage tax pledge to become a problem. But a problem it now is, for the same reason. On that long list published by Alistair Darling yesterday, there will be more problems for the Tories to come.

Gordon Brown could be a bit of a nightmare when he was shadow chancellor, stopping his colleagues from making promises that their various vested interests wanted to hear. But George Osborne should have done the same. Because on the one hand, he and Cameron have the strategic message that they will deal with the deficit more quickly than Labour (slightly confused by their determination to be seen as wanting to spend more on the NHS, but put that to one side). On the other hand, speak to anyone in any pressure group, voluntary group, cause or campaign, and they're all being told they will have Tory backing, that their issue is 'an urgent priority,' often that it is 'the Number 1 priority,' that 'if it needs money we have to find it,' or 'it is not so much about money as political will'. But it all adds up to the same thing. Telling people with their eyes on one part of the picture that they can have what they want, not caring too much about the bigger picture that is someone else's responsibility. Namely Cameron and Osborne.

All Alistair Darling did yesterday was to remind them there is a big picture and it is their big responsibility. That means knowing all the questions, and having the answers.

If they got such an obvious one wrong, there could be a few more such wobbles between now and polling day. .

That the Tories have money to burn is clear from the ads they plastered in several of the newspapers and on strategic ad sites yesterday. Ads are to some extent a matter of taste. They are also a matter of judgement.  If I thought they were good, I would say so. Or at least, given how hard I find it to be nice about anything Tory, I would say they're not bad. I can't. They are crap.

For those who missed them, they were a full page picture of a rather gloomy Parliament at night-time, the middle of the great old building blacked out, and a dark blue, green, light blue three-strap slogan saying YEAR FOR CHANGE.

There is nothing on it to say it is an ad for the Tories, and I can hear now the discussion among the ad execs and the party strategists that led to it. 'We need a teaser, something that just whets the appetitite for the big campaign to come.' 'People don't like politics and politicians, so we need something that is pro-Tory but non-political.' 'The brand is change - popular. Not Tories - not popular. That has to come next.' Yeah right.

There are two types of political ads and political admen. Those designed and determined to win awards. And those likely and desperate to shift votes. This one does neither.

When I showed it to a number of random people, despite the fact I am an evidently political source, not one person thought it was from the Tory Party. The most common response was that it was for (or rather against) global warming. One or two thought it was about MPs' expenses. Greenpeace got a mention. So did the Olympics and the World Cup, Lloyds Bank, Barack Obama, the Green Party and the Lib Dems. One (admittedly the youngest) thought it was for (or by) Gordon Brown.

Others had literally no idea. It said nothing to them.That is because the prior branding work has not been done. If David Cameron's press conferences and speeches had made more of an impact, the new Tory branding would have been more recognisable, and the public might have made a link.

But he has said so little of lasting substance that these hugely expensive ads are like drops of water falling wastefully into a dank pool.

The good news for Labour is that the Tories seem to think 'time for a change' is all they need.

When I heard last week they had taken out a stack of new adverts in the press, I had a little muse about what they might do.

With the kind of money they have, thanks to Belize billionaire backer Lord Ashcroft, I was expecting them to set out a background argument, either about Labour, or themselves, both if they had any sense.

But that would have meant agreeing on what to say. And there they have a problem. So best to say nothing. It means the approach seems to be 'If you've got the money, waste it.' Great slogan. Not.

PS spot on comments from Professor David Woods, chief adviser on London schools, on the uninformed prejudices of the chattering classes against State comprehensive schools.

Standards in State schools have risen, and I would argue that kids in State schools get a far more rounded education than those driven by parental angst and often ignorance to private schools.

A lot of this is about the way the media cover State schools. And that in turn is driven by the fact that a huge majority of key opinion formers send their own children to private schools, and present a distorted picture of what happens in them so as to justify their own decisions. As I have said before. And will say again from time to time no doubt.

Other than urging David Cameron to have as his New Year Resolution the promise to set out a detailed set of policies covering the major areas of national life - and meanwhile the Pig on Runway A is set for take off - and urging the British press to start scrutinising the Tories a tenth as much as they do Labour - that little piggy is waiting over on Runway B - I thought I would leave politics out of the last blog of the year.

Instead I would like to elaborate on the tweet I sent out last night after seeing Nowhere Boy, the story of John Lennon's early years. Even the incredibly annoying noise coming from Avatar on the next screen through an evidently too thin wall - O2 Finchley Road please note - could not detract from a really good night out.

Aaron Johnson, who plays Lennon, and Thomas Sangster, who plays the young Paul McCartney, could have a job for life making movies about the various stages in the lives, careers and in John's case, death, of these musical geniuses.

Lennon's assassination, on December 8 1980, is one of those 'remember where you were' moments. I was in a car in Tavistock, Devon, and Fiona was driving us into the office of the Tavistock Times, where we were both trainee journalists. We had recently set up home together, and as the news came through from New York, I remember wondering if she would have cried as much if I had died.

She has always been a real Beatle fan. Indeed, when she wrote a piece about what life was like living with me when TB and Downing Street commanded so much of our every waking minute, she always listed as the highlight meeting Paul McCartney when he popped in one day for tea with fellow Scouser Cherie. She has not however gone as far as Burnley chief executive Paul Fletcher and his wife Sian, whose Christmas card was a collection of Beatles photos and albums covers, and who have identical Beatles tattoos on their backsides. I wish he would stop showing it to me mind you.

As I write this, I have Elvis on in the background, as I often do, and I was thrilled The King's role in Lennon's musical development was recognised in Nowhere Boy. I loved the bit where he basically wanted to be Elvis.

Our daughter Grace came with us last night, and it is fair to say both Elvis and The Beatles have captured the imagination of successive generations and are likely to do so forever. We just had a discussion about which of all the great musicians of our lifetime would become as established in global cultural history as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, or even Shakespeare.

I'm going for The Beatles, and The King, who would have been 75 next week. Provided we still have a planet, our  grandchildren will be playing their music, and later on so will theirs, and every aspect of their remarkable lives will be the stuff of movie legend too. On that note, Happy New Year.

I will forgive Jack Straw his little jibe at the expense of Burnley FC in his piece on the Tories in today's Independent.

The Blackburn MP says he will donate two tickets to see Burnley reserves to anyone who can name a Tory councillor who has complained locally about the effect of the extra investment which has poured into schools, hospitals and other public services. Hoho.

He does however make a good point about the contrast between David Cameron and George Osborne saying Labour spent too much, and Tories around the country claiming credit for the effect of such investment at local level. He draws attention too, as Labour must never tire of doing, to the wrong calls D and G made when the global economic crisis first erupted, and to the wrong calls they are making now.

But the main purpose of his piece seems to be a warning of the avalanche of press and poster advertising which the Tories are in the process of launching. I saw my first of the posters this morning, a fairly average piece of work focussed on debt. I have to say that given the figures, and given the money they have to spend, they could have done a lot better.

The point however is less the quality than the quantity of advertising that the Tories will be sticking up on billboards around the country. Cameron is warning that there is an era of austerity ahead, although not for top earners who will be well protected by his tax policies, and certainly not for the Tory Party machine, fuelled by Belize billionaire Lord Ashcroft.

Contrary to their current message on government spending, the Tories clearly believe that if you have the money, you may as well spend it, and though there is a debate in politics about the effect of posters, the Tories certainly have a lot of money to spend. But where the money is coming from is likely to become a bigger issue as the election nears and Ashcroft's tax status remains unclear.

Jack Straw says in his article that Cameron would rather conduct the debate of the next few months at the level of slogan and billboard message because 'he knows that the substance of his policies will not stand up to scrutiny; that his policies stand principally to benefit the privileged few - and that the mainstream majority would end up paying the bill.

'That is why, when Labour supports the aspirations of families from low and middle incomes, he wrongly accuses us of "class war"; and why, when Labour exposes the fact that the Tories want to spend billions on tax breaks for the three thousand wealthiest estates in our country, he criticises us for creating "dividing lines".

'These ridiculous claims are a deliberate Conservative smokescreen to conceal the unfairness of their policies. From record-breaking, expensive advertising campaigns to the phoney rhetoric about class war, it's clear that Mr Cameron's strategy is to do everything he can to deflect attention from scrutiny of what a Conservative government would do. Ultimately, regardless of whether it's free flights from foreign companies or billboards bought ultimately from Belize, it doesn't matter how much money Mr Cameron throws at this campaign. The closer we get to the election, the more the Tory policies will come under scrutiny.

'And as they do so, we are confident that the choice facing the British people about the future of this country will become clear. The truth is that the Conservatives made the wrong choices on the economy: on Northern Rock and on help for businesses and families. Now they threaten to choke off the recovery. And all of this is at the same time as they pledge a tax giveaway to the three thousand wealthiest estates. Never before in the history of British elections has a political party spent so much - to help so few.'

By the end of his article, he has upped (sic) the prize to two tickets to see Blackburn Rovers first team. He calls this 'an offer almost beyond price.' Considering that Blackburn's matches are regularly witnessed by thousands of empty blue seats, this is a piece of constituency-based spinology in an otherwise excellent article.

BBC Northern Ireland called this morning, asking me to do an interview about the decision of Democratic Unionist MP Iris Robinson to step down, citing her severe depression as the reason.

Mrs Robinson is also a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and wife of First Minister Peter Robinson, so she knows a thing or two about the stresses and strains of political life.

I was on the programme this morning with an SDLP colleague of Mrs Robinson's in the Assembly, and a UTV newsreader who like me has been open about her depression.

I know Peter Robinson from the peace process talks, but don't know his wife, and her decision to retire from frontline politics, and to admit to her depression, will have been the result of deep reflection by her and her family.

If my own experience is anything to go she will feel better for being open, and she will perhaps be surprised by the warmth of people towards her admission. There are so many people out there with mental health problems, yet so few who speak openly about them.

I hope that once the dust settles she will get involved in the Time to Change campaign to break down the stigma and taboo surrounding mental illness, which leads directly to discrimination.

She is no stranger to controversy, most recently in relation to making some pretty extraordinary comments on homosexuals, which led to 16,000 people signing a Downing Street petition urging Gordon Brown to do something about her.

But whatever born-again nonsense she has talked about other issues, she is someone who knows how to campaign, who knows how to get heard, and who I hope will add her voice to a campaign that needs all the help it can get. I was pleased that her statement suggested she would have more to say on the subject of her illness at a later date.

A word too on her husband. Depression is a horrible illness for the sufferer. But it can be a huge strain too on the family of the depressive, and it cannot have been easy for him to cope with his wife's illness in addition to everything else his various political roles require.

The Robinsons and I would not be natural political bedfellows. Far from it. But I wish them well.

Both partner and daughter have woken to utter 'oh no' as they have seen the mild rain failing, helping to melt the lying snow, and dent the chances of a White Christmas.

He has a lot to answer for does Bing Crosby. All that dreaming of a White Christmas, infecting everyone else's dreams and desires for December 25. I sometimes think it must be easier in Australia, where there's no chance.

I felt a bit of a heel not remotely sharing their concern at the rain, and the disappearing snow. I kept stumm, of course, being a caring partner and father and all that, but truth be told I woke up relieved to see the change in weather. You can have all the White Christmases you want, but to non-God doers like me, Boxing Day football is every bit as much part of the holiday as anything that happens the day before.

So while Fiona and Grace bemoaned the lack of white stuff falling from the sky, I was on the phone to my usual sources in Burnley, who were delivering the bad news that there had been fresh snow overnight - I keep saying to Fiona we should move north ... she'd have woken up happy up there today ...  but they were busy clearing it all from car parks and approach roads.

Of course being a hotshot Premier League club, the pitch itself is not a problem, what with hotshot undersoil heating, but they have to make the surrounding area safe. Elf'n'safety, cor blimey, as Dave Cameron would say.

So all through tomorrow, fingers will be crossed in the hope that the news will filter south that the game is on, and yet another ludicrously long journey north can be embarked upon. Then two days later we're at Everton, and the five-day weather forecast suggests it will be a balmy 4 degrees Celsius in Liverpool, so I've gone ahead and booked the rail tickets.

By then Fiona will have forgotten all about the non-white Christmas and will instead be well into that other Christmas ritual ... complaining about bin collection (lack of). Unless by then she is stuck on the current council moan - justified may I say - that parking for Boxing Day (ie the day after Christmas Day) is not free because Boxing Day this year is Monday 28th not Saturday 26th. I keep telling her ... her life would be so much easier if she had football. Monday 28th is Everton away. Saturday 26th is Bolton at home, and what do you expect from a Lib Dem-Tory coalition?

To those who couldn't be bothered to vote at the last council elections ... this is your fault. Don't blame me, I voted Labour. Have a nice Christmas, unless you play for Bolton or Everton.

Every now and then you read something that makes you go 'wow, I never knew that,' and then it sticks with you sufficient for you to memorise it, not least because you spend far too much time thinking about it.

I came across one such something this morning, in an article about Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's stated intention of cutting Russian time zones from eleven to four. Apparently he thinks the Russian economy will become more efficient if they reduce the number of zones, so that East and West Russia can spend more time being open for business simultaneously. He may have a point, though the article concerned had plenty of people arguing against him going as low as four.

But the something that made me go 'wow, I never knew that' pre-dated Medvedev by more than two centuries, and concerned the French not the Russian Revolution ... namely that post Revolutionary France had a go at a decimal clock, in which the day was split into ten hours of one hundred minutes each.

This system prevailed for 12 years before Napoleon decided it was time to go back to the ancient Egyptian system of 24 hours a day, made up of 60 minutes. 

I can't believe I have got through 52 years without having heard this before. I must have done, but I can't have been listening or concentrating. But on and off through the day I have been trying to work out how the decimal system worked, giving as it did only 1000 minutes per day, as opposed to Egypt's very generous 1440. I used to be good at mental arithmetic but, pathetically, I now need pen and paper to establish the relative lengths of seconds and minutes under different systems. And I'm still strugging to work out exactly how a Test Match would operate under the post-Revolution-pre-Napoleonic system. When would they break for tea?

My other favourite Napoleon fact learned this year was that he, or more likely one of his underlings, invented the baguette ... a direct response to complaints from marching soldiers that their daily chunks of bread were reduced to crumbs in their backpacks by the time they had marched for a few hours. The baguette was made to fit down a couple of holes sewn into the side of their trouser upper leg. Apparently.

But back to time ... imagine the added chaos for Eurostar if we had not just different time zones for London and Paris, but entirely different systems. Indeed, the same piece informed me this morning that the development of British railways, and in particular the Great Western, led to the ironing out of time differences between towns. London used to be ten minutes ahead of Bristol for example.

Medvedev will have his work cut out to win support for a move that may have some people getting up and going to work in the dark. But he can always look south to China, which despite its vastness still operates the single time zone Chairman Mao saw as a way of signalling the importance of central control. China used to have five time zones, which was four too many for Mao's Peking. I think I knew that already. And even if I didn't, I still prefer my decimal French system. God - am I going to bore people about that over the next few days. Happy Christmas.

If you'd asked me a week ago, I'd have put Eurostar in my top ten brands list. Given its long and tortuous history -it arrived 120 years after the original Act of Parliament allowing for the tunnel to be built was passed - the Channel Tunnel has been one of the great infrastructure advances of our lifetime, and the Eurostar experience a cut above the average rail trip.

It is in part because it's reputation is strong that the damage done by recent events appears to be so severe.

What needs to be done now is fairly obvious. Get the service back running again. Compensate those worst affected by the disruption. Sort out the condensation systems that led to the initial breakdowns. And learn any lessons from the last few days.

The most important of those is getting the service back running again, which will act as a reminder of what a great thing it is that London and Paris, or London and Brussels, can so easily and so quickly be connected. Two and a quarter hours to Paris. Under two hours to Brussels. It is a fantastic thing.

At the moment, all we are getting is an orgy of the media's favourite word - 'anger' - as disgruntled or stranded passengers queue to give their horror story.

Clearly what happened is unacceptable. But sometimes these stories are presented as though the disruption was deliberately planned by a wilful and incompetent management.

I imagine the last thing Eurostar executives want or need at Christmas is to be hanging around St Pancras or the Gare du Nord getting chased by cameras and berated by customers. Being the panto vilain for the season is part of the punishment they have to take.

But if all of the above can be done within a reasonable time frame, and with a sense of steady progress towards a set of clear objectives, then the reputational damage, because of the strong reputational base they have, can be contained. But it does require a real sense of empathy, urgency and progress towards getting everything sorted.

I did not see the interview with chief executive Richard Brown described by Stefan Stern in the FT today as 'a case study in how not to apologise for a corporate disaster.' But I heard an excellent Eurostar interview on Five Live yesterday - I think the man's name was Nunn - which struck the right tone and balance between taking the complaints seriously while setting out how things were being sorted.

Crisis management is an inexact science. But assuming anyone at Eurostar has time to read a blog or two, can I offer a couple of observations from my own experience of crisis management in the public eye.

The first is that you once you are in crisis management mode, you have to explain everything you are doing. There is no such thing as too much information or explanation at a time like this. The overall objectives have to be set out clearly, alongside the detailed plans by which they are to be met. This is communications which has to operate at every level - mainstream media, particularly TV and radio, constant updating of company website, direct comms to customers and staff, advertising, marketing materials. There has to be a sense of the situation being calmly brought under control, according to an incessantly communicated plan.

For those managing the crisis, perhaps the most important insight to hold onto is that the crisis will end. It may end in policy changes, personnel changes, resignations and recriminations. But it will end, and a sense of normality will return. Eurostar should even now be preparing to exploit that moment to the full, in terms of communicating a core message - which will be that everything is back to normal. Provided the crisis is resolved reasonably quickly, and competently, there is no reason why, once the storm has passed, Eurostar should not remain pretty high up the brand reputational ladder.

Indeed, sometimes sorting out a crisis can add to reputational strength. Willie Walsh at BA did himself no harm at all in getting his head above the parapet, and keeping it there till the situation was sorted, when Terminal Five got off to its chaotic and incompetent start.

It probably doesn't feel like that to Mr Brown and his team right now. And doubtless I would be expressing myself somewhat differently if I was currently stuck in Paris or Brussels.

But that is the other thing to remember ... there is an epicentre to a crisis, and that is where Mr Brown and the worst affected passengers are based. The rest of the world carries on turning around them. In fact, provided the situation stabilises soon, I'm keeping them in my top ten for now.  

There can't be many teenagers out there unaware that if a boy and a girl have unprotected sex, there is a chance of a girl getting pregnant, and/or both getting a sexually transmitted disease. 

Just as there can't be too many people unaware that if you drink a lot, there is a chance of getting drunk, and if you get drunk a lot, there is a danger you become a problem to yourself and to others.

Those two rather obvious thought came into my mind when I heard someone commenting on Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson's recent comments on Britain's booze culture. 'We need a major public education campaign,' the commenter said.

But to do what?

Can we really say the public are uneducated about drink? Were any one of the people I saw around EC1 last night, on my way home mid-evening from a Christmas party - one guy throwing up, one group of young women staggering towards a club, a group of young men fighting - be in any doubt this morning that drink may have been a significant causal factor? I doubt it.

I have been trying to think back to the days of my own heavy drinking, which eventually helped contribute to a fullscale breakdown, and whether we were as aware then as we are now. So far as I can recall, the answer is we were generally aware, but perhaps less specifically aware. So there has been a fair bit of public education. It may have had some effect, on some individuals. But I think we'd be hard pressed to disagree with the notion that Britain still has a booze culture.

I can remember at the time of the liberalising of the licensing laws making the point on behalf of government that this was partly about trying to make Britain's attitudes to alcohol more like those of the French.

But whilst there may be more coffee bars, bistros and the like, few now make the claim that this change has worked.

Back in my boozing days, there was a lot of public education going on about smoking. It didn't stop me chainsmoking. Well, at least not until the negative effects of smoking became all too apparent, not least on my health, and I made a determined effort to stop, eventually doing so with the help of a hypnotist.

I knew when I was still smoking that it was bad for me. Ultimately the judgement to stop came from within. But who knows the extent to which the 'public education campaigns' had an effect too. So maybe the person who commented on Donaldson was right.

But ultimately the progess made on smoking has been the result of government action, much of it controversial and unpopular at the time, about labelling, pricing and finally banning.

I'm not saying for sure that we should be going down the same route for alcohol. But we're at least going to have to think about some pretty significant change, in the face of considerable public and industry opposition, if we are serious about the kind of cultural shift this issue seems to need.

I don't think I have ever attended an international summit that delivered a perfect outcome. It is the nature of Summitry, the land of compromise.

It is also more likely that the more complicated the Summit structures, the less perfect the likelihood of the outcome. And they don't come much more complicated than Copenhagen.

Even if you penetrate the apparent chaos on the outside, with thousands milling around feeling their importance is not being recognised, there are thousands more inside arguing over big points - like will we save the planet - and small points - like should that be a comma or a semi colon?

But as the negotiations reach a deadline, the power tends to shift from the many who have been involved in a long and tortuous process, to the few who have to seal the deal.

It is at moments like this that you feel the power of leadership, and the relative power of different players on the world stage. Hillary Clinton's arrival clearly gave impetus to the process, in part because she and her people will have been insisting that things be put in better order by the time President Obama arrived. Gordon Brown is a man capable of haggling over single words and punctuation if he has to. But he will have known on arrival that was not where the needs of this particular Summit were, and clearly cut through a lot of the stuff that was holding up progress amid all the Point of Order mentality that can block a deal. Instead he used power and energy, and alliance with other like-minded leaders, to get things moving.

And of course Obama, both because he is US President and because he is Obama, will now add a whole load of impetus of his own.

It could still be that even the imperfect outcome which looks reasonably likely now will fall apart before the day is out. More likely is that there will be moments when it feels like that, moments when it looks like it is coming together, and then a version of it will.

Don't be surprised to see tears and tantrums from those who have been toiling for months on this. People get very emotional at the climax of long negotiations. Don't be surprised to see plenty of celebration. And then plenty of hard-headed analysis around the world as people try to work out what the deal will actually mean.

I heard someone yesterday saying angrily 'why can't they just sit down and agree? This is too important.' Yes, but so are the issues being raised that prevent an agreement. So are the different perspectives held by different countries. So are the politics of different countries.

It's like when people say 'why can't the UN sort it out?' Because the UN is just a collection of the countries of the world, supported by a very odd bureaucracy.

I've been at plenty of Summits where the miracle has been any deal at all. Copenhagen looks to be following that pattern.

There are so many grim headlines with bad numbers in them that this morning one which seemed to buck the trend leapt out at me from the Financial Times.

It was not the biggest story on the page - that went to 'MoD makes cuts to plug budget hole', alongside 'Claims of ministry savings queried by NAO.' Nor was it the most political, cited as it was alongside 'Cameron reverses on MPs' tax status.' No surprise there then.

So, to the headline in question - 'Olympic site underspend spurs Whitehall cash race.' Wow! Come again...

'A race for the spoils of a potential Olympics windfall is in prospect as confidence grows among the team responsible for building the games' venues that a significant portion of the construction budget will not be spent.'

Now, we are still talking big bucks. But if it is true, as reported, that the Olympic Delivery Authority expects the final cost of construction to come in at £7.2billion, not the last budgeted figure of £8.1bn, then hats off to the ODA.

There was a wonderful little item on the regional BBC News last night, one of those ultraspeeded-up films of the main stadium's development. For sports fans, infrastructure development followers, and people who just like to see big visions realised, it was a really exciting piece of film.

The usual rhythm of the Olympics is excitement, followed by anger and disappointment as everything seems to go wrong along the way, followed by excitement again as the Games takes place. London appears to be missing out much of the middle bit.

There will doubtless be rocky patches and the occasional setback. But there is a calm and steady progress towards London 2012 that is rather disproving the idea that Britain can no longer do the big projects well.

Calm and steady progress towards a deadline is not exactly how you would characterise the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. Then again, Summitry rarely does calm and steady. It tends towards over-excited and over-emotional, not helped in this case by under-organised.

I'd have thought any major event planner could have worked out that if you accredit 45000 people to an event venue capable of handling 7000, you might end up with a few organisational problems.

It is been very hard, trying to follow the Summit on the news, actually to discern the process by which any agreement is likely to be made.

But for all the activity of the tens of thousands, the final denouement will be down to the Prime Ministers and Presidents now on their way. I hope they can all get in. And I hope they can reach a meaningful agreement.

Reading it from afar, it doesn't feel great. But perhaps a combination of the seriousness of the issues, the urgency of the leaders and the pressure from those queueing outside in the cold, will yet surprise us all.

Just how hard it will be though was symbolised by something else I noticed in the FT. According to an official Chinese local government website, the air quality in Beijing yesterday was 'excellent.' According to the US Embassy, which does its own monitoring, it was 'unhealthy.' If they can't agree on monitoring standards for air quality, I fear even bigger disagreements between now and Friday's deadline.

As visitors to our house will know, I have not one but six photos of Tiger Woods on the wall opposite the sofa in the kitchen extension where I do a lot of my work.

I bought them from a specialist sports photography agency which often has a stall at Lord's cricket ground. Taken from behind, they look a little bit like paintings, and record the six stages of what is generally reckoned to be the perfect golf swing. Tiger addressing the ball, Tiger half way back, full backswing, downswing, strike, follow through.

It is therefore, for sports fans, a thing of beauty, and even though I am only an occasional golfer, I like to take the occasional close look at the swing of the master.

Looking at it now, the swing looks as perfect as ever. So studying the pictures in isolation, I feel no differently about him than I did before he became embroiled in his car crash and all that has followed.

But the difference between being a golfer, which is what most pro golfers are, and a global brand like Tiger, is that his golf is not seen in isolation. It is the core of the brand, but not all that it entails.

Accenture are also a brand. Tiger was a key part of their branding, which is why he is so often the first recognisable face you see when you step off an aeroplane.

I had a feeling the writing was on the wall as I walked through Heathrow after getting off a plane from Germany last week. There was Tiger, knee deep in rough, with a strapline suggesting it is always the next shot that counts.

It was a superbly placed piece of advertising, visible to all who were filing down  to the Customs Hall via an escalator. You very rarely see people laugh out loud at Heathrow, even in Love Actually. But this became an escalator of laughter and I thought ... Mmm, Accenture won't like that too much.

So they will have been investing a tiny fraction of the sums they invested in Tiger ($7million a year) to find out what their core customers think and then ... 'After careful consideration and analysis the company has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising.'

So, another big blow to Tiger, and there will be more to follow, though none as great as the anger of his wife or the humiliation they have been feeling as the post car crash slow motion car crash has unravelled.

He is still the greatest golfer of all time. His six-frame swing remains a thing of beauty. I will keep it up there for now, and see how things are in the New Year. I have that famous picture of Diego Maradona taking on six Belgian defenders, which might look ok up there. It also shows that in sport, even when the mighty fall, there can be a way back for the really gifted. I have a feeling Tiger will find it. It's just going to take longer than he might have thought as he hit the hydrant.

Ps. good to see the High Speed trains starting today on the commuter lines between Kent and London. Good also to see the commitment to expanding the high speed network in the PBR.

I was speaking at a rail industry dinner recently and there was near universal acclaim for the way Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis was seizing the initiative on rail. He has given real energy and zeal to an issue whose time, surely, has come. In fact, it should have come a long time ago, as it did in France and Japan for example.

So David Cameron says a Tory government will pass a new law to ensure all MPs and members of the House of Lords pay taxes in Britain.

Two thoughts spring quickly to mind. The first is whether, given he keeps going on about Britain being a bust and broken nation, that is really where the country's legislative priorities will lie. I will assume, given he has been an MP for some years now, that he knows how the legislative system works. The government has to prepare a programme, drawn from many competing priorities which ought to be set out in his manifesto... (can't wait for that one) The Queen reads it out in the House of Lords. Bills then get introduced, debated, sometimes amended, often passed. So is he saying this 'new law' will be part of his first Queen's Speech? I doubt it. Yet he says it is going to be 'rushed through.' Oo er ... exciting eh?

The second thought relates to the reason he was being asked the question in the first place, namely the continuing lack of clarity concerning Lord Ashcroft, who is putting large sums of money into Mr Cameron's campaign to become Prime Minister, and Zac Goldsmith, his non-dom ecological advisor and fellow Old Etonian (oops sorry, there I go again, bringing up that boring old 'Cameon went to Eton but wants you to thinks he really cares about Back Street Comp' thing again.)

One plus two equals the fact that to avoid giving a straight answer to a straight question - namely whether Lord Ashcroft has abided by the undertakings given at the time he was made a peer to pay taxes in the UK - Cameron has to come out with this nonsense about passing a new law.

As John Prescott has said on Twitter today - why does Cameron need new legislation to clarify Ashcroft's tax status ... just bloody ask him!

Since writing All In The Mind, making Cracking Up, and becoming Mind Champion of the Year, I've been approached by all manner of mental health organisations and today want to give a plug to one of them.

Breakthrough do some fantastic work promoting the creative work of people with mental health problems. They produce magazines and coffee table books made up entirely of art and photography done by mental health service users.

It is run by husband and wife team Tony and Angie Russell from their home in Barnsley. Tony is bipolar and uses photography as a coping strategy. They have built up a network of artists whose work can be seen and bought on their website.  Inevitably, it is of varied quality, but there is some good stuff on there.

I was in the Royal Free Hospital for an ENT appointment yesterday and was struck by how much artwork you see around the place (alongside some terrific public health messaging, notably on the stairwells we were all being encouraged to use in preference to the lifts). It would be great if art done by mental health service users could get favoured stratus in the NHS artwork procurement policy.

It is an interesting area this. A while back I did the official opening of a new medium secure psychiatric hospital in Lancashire, where art therapy was a key part of the ethos, and was showing great results alongside some interesting art.

Mind are currently working with the talented British artist Stuart Semple, who is auctioning 10 of his early works on eBay, with 100% of the sale price being donated to the charity. Go onto his website to see the paintings and the bids they have so far attracted.

When Stuart was 18, he almost died from a food allergy.  He was rushed to hospital experiencing anaphylactic shock and his heart stopped. The cause of the reaction was unknown and this traumatic experience, and resulting anxiety, caused Stuart to develop OCD tendencies towards food and a severe food phobia, to the point that he felt himself unable to swallow. To try and resolve his issues he began to channel his energy into painting, using it as an outlet for his emotions.  It is these early works that began to gain him critical acclaim. So now, through the auction, he is investing the money he has made back into the system to help others.

Nice story. There are plenty of others in the magazines and coffee table books made by Tony and Angie Russell, and I hope they start to get the support and recognition they deserve.

I cannot quite believe I will be missing BBC Sports Personality of the Year tomorrow night, and if I told you the reason ... oh spare me the embarrassment.

I'll give you a clue. My daughter can't quite believe she is missing the final of X-Factor, but if I tell you that she is a bit happier about the reason, you have one clue.

Facebook friends get another if they remember the time she got onto my Facebook page and updated my status to 'I really love Hannah Montana' (which had a big response and forced me into rebuttal mode, followed by an over earnest debate about internet security.) Yes, it's Miley Cyrus at the O2 and Grace is insisting it is one of those father-daugher bonding moments that Dads cannot resist, whatever the pull of X-Factor for her and Sports Personality for me.

At least this time it is unlikely to make the front of The Guardian, which is what happened when she dragged me (a little more willingly I will confess) to a Britney Spears concert at Wembley. October 10 2000, the day Scotland's First Minister Donald Dewar was taken ill, shortly before he died. I remember it for that, and also for the fact that half way through Matthew Engel, then of The Guardian, popped up to say he was doing a piece on Britney crowds. The embarrassment in the office the next day was considerable, and even now I get the occasional Britney jibe chucked my way.

Still, it will be nice to visit the Dome, as we used to call it in its unfairly derided days, and reflect on the fact that if we had not gone ahead with it, London might not have what is currently reckoned to be the most successful live music venue in the world (with the possible exception of Simon Cowell's brain.)

As for Sports Personality, my sons will be authorised to exercise my vote(s). I thought last year that Lewis Hamilton would win, so we voted - a lot - for Chris Hoy, not out of any dislike or lack of respect for Hamilton, but because Hoy is one of the greatest British sportsmen of all time, and his achievement in Beijing was truly outstanding. Clearly lots of other people thought the same, and he duly won.

This year, the same part of my mind that thought Hamilton would win says Jensen Button will do it. Most of the bookies have him around evens. But watch out for Ryan Giggs. When the nominations were first made, you could get 120-1 for Giggs to win it. He is now around the 5-2 mark, and narrowing. Usually it is won by someone who has made an exceptional contribution in the year in question, which puts world champions like Button and David Heye at an advantage. But with so many of the younger viewers probably giving it a miss for X-Factor, the demographics on the Beeb may rise a bit, and that could favour Giggs, and the sense that this is as much an award for his lifetime contribution as for his admittedly brilliant form over the past 12 months.

Interestingly, my Man United supporting, cycling fanatic elder son, who had been planning to vote for Mark Cavendish, has decided Cav can't win, but Giggs might, so that's the direction he is going in too. But what do I know, other than that I will be out listening to a lot of screaming girls (I assume) as I await the text message to tell me whether Giggs was on the button.

Judging by the instant commentary I witnessed yesterday, I don't suppose the papers will make pretty reading for the government. I haven't looked.

But Alistair Darling's statement throws up some difficult questions for the Opposition too, and their difficulties in answering them were immediately clear.

The public are fully aware of the depth and scale of the recession. The Tories have sought to pin all the blame for it on Labour. But if the public bought that line, the Tories would be out of sight in the polls. That they're not says something about their lack of appeal. It also says something about the public's ability to understand that all governments are having to make difficult decisions to deal with the fall-out of the economic crisis. Just look at Ireland's budget if you want really eye-watering tough choices.

But the public are also alert to inconsistencies in political positioning and these were on display in plenty as the Tories sought to exploit Labour's difficult decisions.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne spoke of it being not a pre-Budget report, but a pre-election budget. I have been involved in pre-election budgets. They tend not to involve hikes in national insurance and cuts in public spending. This was not an overly political statement.

Later in the day, Osborne's deputy Philip Hammond was all over the place in trying not to answer the question about whether they would reverse the NI rise - I think we can safely assume they won't - and whether such a move was more or less a priority than the commitment to cut inheritance tax for the wealthy.

They will also have to reach a settled judgement on how to handle the bankers and their bonuses, as yet not clear.

They were sending out inconsistent signals on spending. On the one hand, Labour was endangering public services and seeking to conceal the scale of the cuts. On the other, they felt the government should be doing more to cut the budget deficit - ie cut faster and more deeply - but nor will they say where these Tory cuts might fall. I'm afraid the old 'we'll have to wait to see the state of the books before we can decide' will not sustain them to the election.

So for all the talk yesterday, and all the endless negative blather of the punditocracy, I'm not sure the political fundamentals have shifted much. The central questions remain - who do you trust to steer Britain from recession to recovery? And do you think we should continue to see investment as part of the plan for growth, or go for faster deeper cuts now?

It is also significant, and being noted more often, that Osborne and Co made the wrong calls on all the big moments of this recession so they do not have much capital in the bank of credibility should a few more difficult calls come before an election, and they get those wrong too.

Given the nature of the political and economic wicket, the Tories ought to be feeling like a Test side declaring with seven wickets left, and a lead of 500 runs as they send Labour in to bat on a turning pitch. Instead they have the look of a team leading in a one day match and hoping the rain will come in and it'll all get settled according to the Duckworth Lewis rules.

(Apologies to non-cricket fans who may have to google Duckworth Lewis, but it is too early in the morning for me to explain).

Alistair Darling's big day then. Another one. To be Chancellor of the Exchequer amid the kind of economic storms that have battered the world in the last year or so means there have been plenty of big days.

Today is one where most people will take a look or have a listen and Alistair will set out how we got here and how we intend to go forward.

Some of the figures will be eye-popping yet we already seem to be used to those. Some of the decisions will be pretty enormous too, with consequences for families, businesses, public services. It's what Chancellors have to do.

So we will see plenty of the white hair, the black eyebrows and the thin smile as Alistair sets it all out and  explains it time and again during the post-match interviews.

It is often said by the media commentariat, wrong about so much, that Alistair is dull. He's not. He is not flamboyant. It is not the same thing.

It is equally to his credit that while the constant media negativity about everything in Britain does not exactly please him, it does not get to him.

He is a serious sober character at a time they are needed in plenty. When there seemed to be something of a briefing operation run against him to suggest he should be moved, he didn't engage. He just carried on doing the job.

There are few now who suggest he does not at least have the weight and authority to deal with some very big issues, and deal with them calmly and well.

So the choice on the management of the economy is not Alistair or a reshuffled member of the Cabinet, but Darling or George Osborne.

And I think that has had something to do with the closing of the gap between the main parties.

A word too, in this era of political spousery, for his wife Maggie. If you can be a down-to-earth livewire, that's what she is. And if there ever was a chance of Alistair's sobriety and seriousness developing into a more Caledonian Donald Dewaresque gloom, Maggie will have chased it away faster than you could say PBR.

I bumped into former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown at Heathrow yesterday, and found myself on the same flight. We were able later to swap stories about random encounters with passers-by. In his case, someone saying to him 'didn't you used to be Paddy Ashdown?', in mine someone asking me if I was Alastair Campbell and, when I confirmed I was, telling me his name was Alastair Campbell too, adding 'have you any idea what my life has been like these past few years?'

I always had a lot of time for Paddy, even if I was never exactly persuaded of TB's strategy for dealing with his party. He was a good third party leader and has since gone on to do important and valuable work, particularly in Bosnia. The skills he deployed there would not have gone amiss in Afghanistan.

But he got me thinking about the role of the Lib Dems today. I cannot claim to be an expert on Lib Dem internal politics. Nor can I claim to have detected a political or electoral strategy of any great clarity. That may be deliberate on the part of Nick Clegg, who will be hoping to garner support of people tired of Labour but not remotely convinced of the Tories under David Cameron.

But as two powerful political impulses collide - namely 'time for a change' and 'are the other lot really up to it?' the buzz around the prospect of a hung Parliament will grow, and Clegg's positioning within the bigger political picture will have to become clearer.

The Lib Dems have a reputation as good local campaigners, able to tailor their messages to suit local audiences. But when it comes to a general election, people know they are electing not just their own MP, but the government and the Prime Minister. And they know that the Prime Minister will be either Gordon Brown or David Cameron.

As to where Clegg stands on the possible ramifications of a hung Parliament, he will not be able to get through an entire campaign without having the outline answers ready. Would he be willing to work in alliance with Labour? Would he be able to do the same with the Tories?

I suspect, whatever his personal preferences, that he will not be allowed to do either. There are fiercely anti-Labour forces in his party, and fiercely anti-Tory forces as well. I'm not convinced they can be reconciled.

All of which makes the prospect of a hung Parliament not terribly attractive in a country not used to its politics of compromise. Which means the country may prefer to give a clearer verdict one way or the other. Labour or Tory. No messing around in the middle. So the Lib Dems get squeezed. Or am I missing something?

A surprisingly impactful front page of The Guardian today, given that the headline is a non-screaming quote from their own editorial and the only picture an unrelated head and shoulders shot of Helen Mirren advertising Christmas wrapping paper. 

Back in my day (writes a middle-aged old fart) front pages were hidden away till as late as possible - even from colleagues - because sales depended on impact on the news-stands the next morning.

In the 24 hour TV age, no sooner is the front page drawn up than it is being pinged over to the broadcasters in the hope of a bit of free marketing. The Guardian deserves plenty today for its front page editorial on the Copenhagen Summit, which is being published simultaneously in newspapers in 45 countries.

It was seemingly The Guardian's idea and in the toing and froing over the text, which went on for more than a month, they will have had at least some idea of what it is going to be like at the Summit. Only an idea though. Newspapers merely have to express a view. What the leaders and delegates at Copenhagen have to do is reach decisions which will then have to be translated into legislative and other changes in a host of different political systems and environments.

Throw in the recent mini-surge in voices suddenly (and irresponsibly in the case of most) questioning the science, questioning even the question - is climate change man-made? - and you have a very difficult event for the politicians to handle.

The Guardian rightly points out that we are all going to have to face up to change in how we lead our lives. Seeing that is easy. Making it happen in all the countries of the world is the hard bit. Really hard.

Inside the paper is an article by Gordon Brown, also reflecting on the scale of the challenge, and the neccessity of the leaders to rise to it. Britain has performed an important leadership role in the build-up to Copenhagen, just as John Prescott and his team did pre-Kyoto. GB, and everyone else, has been cheered by Barack Obama's decision to be there when the talks get down to the nitty-gritty. It is another reminder of the enormous responsibility the US President carries.

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgement on this generation' is the Guardian quote in the headline. Ok, a bit of hyperbole maybe. But not much.

This matters.

Today is the fourth anniversary of David Cameron's election as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I think we should all just have a moment's reflection, and ask ourselves what we consider to be the most telling moment, thought, image or (honestly, come on, let's try) 'policy' of those four years.

For me, I am still struck by some of his early environmental image work ... the wind turbine on the Notting Hill roof, the cycling to work (albeit weakened by the gas-guzzler following on behind), the brief flirtation with 'vote blue, get green' and above all that great picture of him all bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked at the Arctic Circle on a sled pulled by huskies.

I am now however even more struck by the paucity of environmental policy and the thin-ness of environmental voice that he lends to the debate in advance of what could be one of the most important events of his political lifetime, namely the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.

The contrast between huskies back then, and near silence now, does lead one to the conclusion that there is something to the charge that he is more worried about pictures than he is about policy and substance.

I was talking to someone the other day who is on the fringes of the Tory strategic debate (he works for one of the pollsters the Tories use) who said that Cameron's current strategy was to make a bit of noise every now and then but a lot of the time to keep his head down.

His health and safety speech would fit in the 'make a bit of noise every now and then' category. His lack of a big message pre-Copenhagen or pre-Pre Budget Report falls into the 'head down' side of the ledger.

It suggests he really does believe governments lose elections, rather than that oppositions win them. But while it is true that back in 1997 we were helped by the Tories, and might have won whatever we did, I doubt it, and I am sure the size of the majority was down as much to what we did as to anything the Tories did.

Indeed, when you look at the scale of change led by Tony Blair in his three years as Opposition Leader, and the extent to which we dominated the political debate as the Party went through a major process of change to policy, Constitution and pretty much everything else, Cameron's four years of leadership seem pale and inactive by comparison.

The notion that as we enter an election year the Leader of the Opposition should opt to coast, and keep his head down, is bizarre. But it is to some extent confirmed by the approach to his team, something Andrew Rawnsley writes about in his Observer column today. Cameron is deemed by the Tory image-makers to be just about palatable to the public, WIlliam Hague and Ken Clarke are already well-known public figures from their previous incarnations, George Osborne is bound to have a profile as shadow chancellor. But apart from them, every single one of the shadow cabinet could walk down any street in the UK pretty much unerecognised and unmolested. It is pretty odd to think they could within a matter of months be running every department in Whitehall.

Enough from me though ... what do you see as the thus far abiding image, comment, observation or policy?

If you want another angle on how 'modern Toryism' might look in power, study the tale of Boris Johnson and Veronica Wadley.

Most of you know who Boris is by now. Old Etonian (oh sorry, not allowed to say that), ex Telegraph journalist, funny on quiz shows, blonde mop, became London mayor ....

... with the help of Veronica Wadley, editor of the London Evening Standard when it was being run by Paul Dacre (kids sent to Eton, hate-filled bilious ubergruppenfuhrer of all things Mail Group Zeitung)

Since Boris became mayor, Waddles has become paperless and therefore in need of something else to do with her time, and what her friends like Boris call her 'considerable abilities.'

And just as Dave and Gideon woke up one day and said wouldn't it be a jolly wheeze to run the country, like Boris is running London, boo hiss fiddlesticks, how cone Bozza got to get a proper job first, she woke up and thought 'wouldn't it be super if I could become the London arts supremo?'

After all, she went to loads of first nights as Standard editor and she had lots of film reviews and, er, everything.

The problem is it is a public position and there are things called Nolan principles and interviewing panels and, er, stuff like that.

But Waddles pressed ahead undeterred. After all she knew Boris and Boris, er, owed her one.

So she applied. And she was one of five to be interviewed. But she was deemed by the panel not to meet the criteria for the job and so was not on the short list of three to be interviewed by Boris.

Boris wasn't happy about that. He decided to interview four, not three, and guess who the fourth was?

Then guess who he recommended for the job? Yes!!! Let's hear it for the Waddler. She's got the job. Alas for Boris and Waddles, there were a few more hurdles to jump, like his recommendation being accepted by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw. But by now the arts world was awash (if an arts world can be in such a state) with rumours - widely dismissed by genuine arts experts - that Dacre's former oberleutnant in the Gruppenfuhrer-antiKen department was to  get this important job.

Bradshaw is made aware of the apparent irregularities of the process, is in any event already aware of the lack of ability and qualifications of Waddles, and so puts the thing on hold. Members of the interviewing panel warn the process has been irregular. 

Ah, say the Bojoistas at City Hall. Let's not have the job filled until Dave is PM and then we can get it snuck in under cover of all our new pals being in there with their spiffing red boxes and tacky Vauxhall 'ministerial limos'.

Meanwhile Labour at City Hall press on and force the publication of emails and correspondence which suggest Boris has not been wholly open and frank about the process. Oh for heaven's sake, say his people, this was a clerical oversight. Yeah, right.

Waddles should be assured Boris will fight for her. That's what they're taught at Eton ... Stand up for your own.

As to what the rest of the world will make of it, who knows? Because in common with so much else that is, er, a bit tricky for Dave and Co, there is something of the usual news blackout applying. The Guardian are giving it a go but pretty much solo.

Imagine if this had been Ken. Oh my God. 'Oi Waddles,' the Obergruppenfuhrer would be shouting from his bunker, 'can we up the pointsize on "croney" in the headline? There's a dear.'

Still, must be nice to have all those friends who keep these stories quiet when those horrid lefty press people and a few pols try to suggest this is another example of what a Tory Britain might be like - an elite running things for their friends from high places.

Er, inheritance tax cut for my Notting Hill chums anyone?

I bumped into Commons Speaker John Bercow at a charity do the other night, and we had a little chat about the need for politics to do a better job of defending itself against media negativity, and about what it's like living with strong-minded women who don't always agree with everything we say and do.

It is the second part of that I want to address today, after reading the comments of his wife Sally, who is planning to run as a Labour candidate in Westminster council elections, despite her husband being elected as a Tory MP.

Now Fiona and I have had our differences, some of which are recorded in The Blair Years. But neither of us could ever imagine living with someone on the other side of the political divide.

I was always intrigued for example by the relationship between James Carville, who I got to know when he was Bill Clinton's passionately pro-Democrat strategist, and Mary Matalin, who I worked with when she was on the payroll of hardline Republican Vice President Dick Cheney. 'How on earth does it work?' I asked her. 'Don't ask me, but somehow it does.'

I remember a Labour activist once proudly proclaiming his credentials by saying he had never 'knowingly slept with (sic) a Tory,' and that kind of tribalism fits my own worldview.

Yet Fiona and I have had fundamental disagreements on some pretty big issues and still managed to hold it together as a couple. And what struck me talking to John Bercow was how proud he seemed to be of his wife having her own mind and her own ambitions.

I will come on to what she said in a moment but first take a look at the quote of Tory MP Nadine Dorries. 'We desperately need to restore both authority and respect to Parliament. What this interview has done is remove any painstaking progress Parliament has made and reduced the Speaker and his office to that of a laughing stock.'

I totally disagree. I think Sally Bercow's independence of mind and views, and his view of them, speak rather well of the Speaker.

While the Tory papers (ie most of them) have gone on her confessions of binge drinking and one night stands, what Dorries and other Tories probably object to is the spot-on content of her political comments.

She says David Cameron is a 'merchant of spin.' No controversy there then. Statement of fact.

He is 'an archetypal Tory,' she says. 'He favours the interests of the few over the mainstream majority.' Er, inheritance tax cut for the Notting Hill set anyone?

'Deep down I do think the Tory Party is for the privileged few. They're not really interested in opportunity for all.' Which is why they opposed so many of the measures Labour brought in to extend opportunity and why their spending and tax cutting priorities are skewed towards the top end.

On schools she says that despite Cameron using state primary schools 'there's not a real commitment to the state sector among the Tories. The vast majority of the shadow cabinet send their children privately.' It is in their DNA. How else could it be when your party has always believed that an elite should run the country for an elite.

Spot on too with her opposition to selective (ie rejective) grammar schools.

Tory MPs are busy saying it is bad enough she is standing for a probably winnable council seat, but it would be an outrage if she were to land a winnable seat for Labour in Parliament.

Au contraire. I mean as part of the new post-expenses scandal regime, spouses are to be banned from working for MPs. So she might as well try to get a job independent of him but which allows her to be in the same place some of the time, able to keep an eye on the kids and make sure his dinner is cooking nicely. (Oops, lapse to northern type there, apologies Sisters.)

Seriously though, she looks to me like she could be a breath of fresh air.

Go for it Sally. And keep saying what you think about Dave and his gang.

They don't like it up 'em. You're not even allowed to say what schools they went to without them bleating on about 'class war.'

Apparently Dave, Boris, Zak and Co used to call George Osborne 'oik' ... because he only went to St Paul's.

Use that one Sally ... 'Order, order ... '

And by the way, will someone explain to me why we no longer see the famous Bullingdon Club picture any more? Couldn't be that one of Dave's rich and powerful friends has bought it out of circulation, could it?

If background doesn't matter, why don't they want to be open about it?

So GB trounced Cameron at PMQs yesterday. That was the word used by my taxi driver, who had been listening on Five Live, and by plenty of others who texted, called and variously communicated the view that GB had been on form and DC on the floor.

I subsequently watched it myself - don't you just love the Parliament channel, shorn of commentators whispering that Nick Clegg is the leader of the Lib Dems, and pundits telling you what you ought to think - and I would have to agree with the cabbie.

Strategy is the key here. GB is right to keep banging on about inheritance tax because it speaks to what people are instinctively beginning to feel about Dave - that he is a pretty standard Tory who thinks if he sprays on a bit of 'I care about poverty' and smiles more nicely than Michael Howard, nobody will notice.

The Tories and their media friends will try to present this as class war, as they will any reminder to the public that Cameron went to a school that is a symbol of a system of class and privilege, and a fairly big barrier to Cameron's efforts to present himself as someone who gets the life of most people.

This crazy inheritance tax policy, one of their few firm commitments, dreamed up a couple of conferences ago, is fast becoming a potent symbol of the politics of privilege, that those who have should be helped to have some more. At a time of plenty, it might have seemed a jolly good wheeze. Right now, with the Tories ready to make savage cuts to public services, it doesn't look too clever.

One PMQs does not a political summer make. But the reason these exchanges matter is because they are often the place where competing strategies are forged.

Tony Blair worked out his opponents' defining weaknesses over time, over the despatch box. Major's weakness in facing up to the issues that divided his party. Hague's poor judgement which no amount of wit (a strength which became a weakness) could conceal. Duncan-Smith's unclear direction and all too clear opportunism. Howard's opportunism, nastiness and bandwagoning so extreme that he (with Dave at his right hand) at one point made gypsies the centrepiece of his campaign. (He's got form on the conkers front you see).

Cameron's weakness is that he has failed to do the strategic and policy heavy lifting to persuade the public his party has really changed. The reason is that he knows deep down his party hasn't changed and it doesn't really want to. 

His highly effective presentation of the pretence of change can only take him so far. But the reality of a standard Tory toff who knows his party hasn't changed so he can't do much on the policy front and when he does it is right-wing nonsense like inheritance tax cuts for the rich or vacuous rubbish like his speech on conkers and goggles - oh my God did he really deliver that speech? - will eventually catch up on him. And it is. He can't say I didn't warn him. I've been saying it for yonks.

He does not have a clear sense of direction for his party. So why should the country think he has a clear sense of direction for Britain?

I was up in Bolton for a mental health conference yesterday, then out at a dinner, and so missed all the news all day and by the time I got in, I just wanted to get to bed.

But I was aware that yesterday a very important political leader had made a very important speech on a very important issue,  so I thought I'd better take a bit of time this morning to look at a paper and catch up.

I counted on the Financial Times, unusual in continuing to be a good old-fashioned newspaper which gives you the news fairly straight, and then signposts to a variety of comment pieces in different parts of the paper.

But this morning, I was disappointed. I read from cover to cover, and the major speech did not even get a mention. How could this be? We are talking about one of the most important political leaders on our landscape. Surely what he says is important? But no, not a word.

In so far as there was coverage of an important speech by an important leader on an important subject, it was all left to President Obama and Afghanistan. Important, granted.

But what about Dave and his conkers?

If the polls are correct, we are talking about our future Prime Minister here. Surely when he speaks, we should listen, and the media have a duty to report?

Is the FT saying that amid all the coverage of Afghanistan, Dubai, the looming pre-budget report and all the other national and international issues currently on the agenda, they cannot find a single pesky paragraph to tell us what Dave was saying in his hugely important 'elf'n'safety' speech yesterday?

I mean, this was the big one. Teachers make kids wear goggles to play conkers. Apparently. Trainee hairdressers can't have scissors in case they cut themselves. Supposedly. Public sector workers don't help mothers lift prams upstairs because they're not insured. Or so it said in one of the papers Dave read in the back of his car one day ... I mean, stands to reason, dunnit?

Sensible Tories are asking themselves - why, when the economy has been battered, public spending is under threat, the expenses scandal engulfed politics, 'when 'time for a change' is such a potent force, when GB's personal ratings have been low, when support for the conflict in Afghanistan appears to have fallen, and the profile of the Iraq war has risen, they are not out of sight?

The answer is that nobody really understands what direction they want to take the country in. We hear their complaints about Labour. But we have no real sense of their own vision for the future. He has been there four years but we still don't really know. And that leaves people thinking he doesn't really know.

So on a day when he could have contributed to the debate on Afghanistan, on the global economy, on the national economy pre-PBR, he comes out with a lot of vacuous nonsense cobbled together with a few Daily Mail cuttings, whose accuracy given the source cannot be taken for granted. A few dubious exceptions are used to illustrate what he likes to put over as a general picture. But no matter the favourable coverage he may have generated in one or two quarters, it is all adding to the sense that he has a problem with serious opinion. Yesterday he added to it.

A couple of weeks ago, a French magazine asked me to write a piece about the relationship between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy.

We might like to think that politics and diplomacy is all about issues, policies, ideals, and there is a fair bit of that. But there is no point pretending personalities do not come into it, even - possibly even especially - at the top end of the diplomatic tree.

As President Obama prepares to make his announcement on more troops for Afghanistan, we can look back on recent weeks as evidence of a very deliberative approach to decision-making. Even amid all the accusations of dithering, and leaving the strategic space void, he continued to take advice, reflect, refuse to be rushed. Not easy in the 24/7 media age.

President Sarkozy is a very different character, a livewire, emotional as well as calculating, prone to sudden outbursts, like his celebration of a Frenchman becoming Europe's new single market commissioner with the observation that 'the English are the big losers in this business.' Let us put aside, that on St Andrew's Day of all days, and with a Scot as our PM, he might have referred to us as 'British.' It was not very diplomatic, and it led to the new commissioner, Michel Barnier, having to do the rounds to make assuring pro-enterprise noises to the City.

But of rather more immediate significance is the issue of troop numbers for Afghanistan, and here the tale of the three leaders, Obama, Sarkozy and Brown, is further enmeshed. Obama is about to pledge another 30,000 troops. Britain has already pledged 500 to take the UK contingent, including special forces, over the 10,000 mark. Germany has 4,365 troops involved, France 3,120.

Sarkozy's defence minister yesterday described this as 'an extremely big effort' adding 'there is no question for now of raising numbers.'

A combination of this, plus the Barnier comments, will make for an interesting mood the next time GB and Sarkozy meet. And when Obama next sees Sarko, he will be thinking that America deserves more European support in trying to tackle a terror threat that confronts us all.

In the meantime, this is the piece I wrote for L'Express, which has some relevance to what is happening now.

'The keys to political and electoral success are strong leadership, clarity of strategy and message, and boldness in execution.

I vividly recall the moment I felt Nicolas Sarkozy had the bold touch in campaigning. It was when he pitched up in London for a presidential campaign event that turned out to be as successful as it was high profile. It was bold because campaigning outside your own country, no matter the size of the diaspora, is not the norm. It risks sending a message 'back home' that 'abroad' matters more. Instead, he used it to show an understanding of the changed nature of the electorate post globalisation, and energy and drive in going for votes wherever they may be.

Sarkozy had already by then emerged as the more strategic and charismatic of the two main contestants, and was making most of the political weather. That visit pressed home the advantage.

Barack Obama took on an even more ambitious overseas challenge during his campaign for the White House - a trip to Iraq, Israel, Berlin and London. 'The Audacity to Win', the memoir of his campaign manager, David Plouffe, underlines the risk Obama and team realised they were taking. Page 272 has a very interesting revelation that says something about both Presidents.

'On our last call before locking in the itinerary,' writes Plouffe. 'Obama insisted that we add France to the agenda. He said that while it might not add much to this trip, if he was elected president, this perceived slight could start him off on the wrong foot. We fought this but he pulled rank, and that was that.'

So why is that so revealing? Because it shows that Obama, whilst receiving strong advice to the contrary, believed he had to see Sarkozy if he was seeing Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown. It also revealed his anxiety there could be a possible price to pay if he didn't. Sometimes politics is about personalities, and Obama made a human calculation about Sarkozy's. It benefited both men.

As for the impact, Obama's speech to enormous crowds in Berlin was the main European event but Plouffe also writes 'The subsequent meetings with European leaders were judged to have gone well. If there was a problem it was that they went too well - Sarkozy essentially endorsed Obama in glowing language during their joint press availability. This created some blowback in the American press that being the candidate of Europe and France could backfire with voters. We found this thinking dated but, nonetheless, we monitored the story carefully.'

So why is that revealing? Because it shows Sarkozy's capacity for being noticed by going a little over the top, but in a way that caused concern but no offence. Another bold move, in response to Obama's bold decision to go there.

Since then, there have been disagreements, over the US handling of Iran and North Korea, for example, and tensions on climate change pre the Copenhagen Summit, and reports of Sarkozy being disgruntled that he perhaps does not figure quite so often in Obama's thinking as the American President does in his.

Does any of this matter? It does. Relations between nations matter and the relations between their leaders are often the most important manifestation. Even before he reached the White House, Obama knew Sarkozy was one president worth keeping on his radar. And when Sarkozy feels the US radar is deficient, he makes sure the world - and therefore Obama - knows about it.

It also explains why, despite initially favouring Tony Blair as the first ‘president of the EU,' Sarkozy eventually fell in with Merkel's desire for a less well known, centre right, small country politician unlikely to interfere too much with their direct lines to Obama. Herman van Rompuy's appointment is in part a product of Sarkozy's belief that his own relationship as a near equal player with Obama matters more than the new bold leadership for Europe the Lisbon Treaty was supposed to deliver. That too says something about both presidents, the importance of status to one, the raw power of the other.'

Raw power ... Obama may be thinking today that the French, despite Sarkozy's colourfully stated pro-Americanism, have not responded too well to the moves he has made, before and since his election. His Ambassador in Paris will be making sure he knows that the French position is no more troops 'for now.' That doesn't mean forever. A space to be watched.

And while Obama, Brown and Sarko address issues like war and terrorism, and repairing the global economy, I hear David Cameron is out and about today putting health and safety at the heart of the political debate. Undeterred by ballsing up his facts on the terrorist schools that weren't, he is going out to bat on tabloid tales that  children have been made to wear goggles to play conkers, and trainee hairdressers have been banned from using scissors in case they cut themselves. This is the big issue for the day. Oh, the tabs will lap it up Dave. While serious people further question whether Dave is very serious at all.

Until yesterday, I had never heard of Professor Jerry Morris. Yet a fascinating obituary in The Times made me wish I had.

Maybe it is because I am now on the back nine of life, as over 50s golfers call it, that I read obituaries more than I used to. It is also - another back nine point perhaps - because often I will have known one or more of the people covered. Most weeks there seems to be a former MP who was around when I first covered Parliament.

But it is also because with the standard of writing and reporting across most of the media falling, obituaries in the broadsheets often contain some of the best old-fashioned journalism, and the best stories.

Professor Morris was Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a leading epidemiologist.

The obit records that he 'effectively proved the connection between health and physical exercise by studying the comparative incidence of heart attacks between London's bus drivers and bus conductors.'

I don't know why that tickled me so much, but tickle me it did.

He was not the first to assume a link between exercise and health, but the first to provide data, first published in The Lancet in 1953. And its base was years of study of bus drivers, who spent most of their working day seated behind the wheel, and conductors who made hundreds of journeys up and down the stairs of double-decker buses every day. No prizes for guessing which group had the longer-lasting hearts.

He did similar research among postal workers, finding that postmen who delivered on foot or by bike were less likely to have a heart attack than sedentary clerks or telephonists.

And then he set to work on a study of 18,000 desk bound civil servants, and found that the fittest were those who undertook regular vigorous exercise.

It all seems very obvious now. But it was trail-blazing stuff and he was considered something of an eccentric, not least because he was one of the first people to take up jogging.

This was also the pre-computer age so this vast research was all recorded by pen and paper, but led eventually to the accepted wisdom that exercise is good for you.

It appears to have been tough though. He clearly found it difficult to get acceptance for his work. Some of the papers ridiculed him. It was when the Americans took up his research that he started to make a bit of progress.

He later sat on a number of public health policy committees but again found resistance to measures he recommended to tackle problems caused by smoking, pollution, health inequalities.

I loved the exchange recorded when Professor Morris was studying juvenile rheumatism and rheumatic heart disease, which affected poor children, and a superior who worked in Harley Street and at Eton, said he never saw a single case at the school. 'An acute clinical observation,' remarked the professor.

He enjoyed a low pulse rate and well into his nineties he swam, cycled or walked every day. He did most of his running round Hampstead Heath, so I must have seen him over the years.

And in the last eight weeks of his life he went to 14 plays, four operas and two concerts. He was '99 and a half.'

A life well lived.

Can't wait to see what prominence the Dave C fanzines give to the views of Mr Stephen Greenhalgh in the morning press.

This is the man who suggested that the inexperience of the current shadow cabinet is so serious that they have not even run a piss up in a brewery.

So what, you say, I hear that kind of thing all the time. Yes, maybe you do. But Mr Greenhalgh is what is known as a 'top Tory' by dint of his position as leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. But he's even topper than that. He is head of the Conservative councils' innovation unit, and his policies and ideas have been picked out for special praise by shadow chancellor George Osborne.

Yet in his comments, Greenhalgh seems to think Osborne's inexperience is perhaps most worrying of all of them. 'My mates are all in the shadow Cabinet, waiting to get those [ministerial] boxes, being terribly excited,' he told a round table discussion. 'I went to university with them, they haven¹t run a piss-up in a brewery... they¹re going to get a department of state, in one case running the finances of the nation.' He doesn't exactly sound terribly confident about George's abilities, does he? Who said all Tories were out of touch with the real world.

Greenhalgh pointed to other countries, such as France and the US, where members of the government had typically served at a regional level earlier in their careers. 'If you¹re going to fail, fail running Alabama, fail running Texas, fail running the city of Paris,' he said. 'Don¹t just take over the country.' Well at least Boris was listening as he goes around failing to run London.

Of course as a few people have said on my Facebook and twitter pages, TB, GB and Co were very inexperienced pre 1997. But most of the British public did at least have a fair idea about who they were. Not just Blair, Brown, Prescott and the ones we used to call 'the Big Guns,' but quite a number of shadow cabinet members were pretty long serving and had at least set out a stack of policy to the public.

I was in a cab - sorry I would have got the tube but I had luggage and was late - when I heard about Greenhalgh's comments. I asked the cabbie if he could name any members of the Tory top team. He knew Cameron. He knew William Hague. And he knew 'Osmond'. (I was too polite to correct him). And he knew that a new portrait had just been painted of Mrs T. Now there was someone who knew how to run a piss up in a brewery. At least I assume the person who organised the privatisation of the railways was pissed at the time.

First of all, congratulations to BBC Inside Sport for its film last night on depression in sport.

Gabby Logan's sensitive and revealing interviews with cricketer Marcus Trescothick, boxer Frank Bruno, footballer Neil Lennon and All Black rugby star John Kirwan were not just good TV. They will also help the continuing campaign to break down stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness.

As the programme explained, 92 per cent of people admit they would be unlikely to reveal a mental health problem in case it affected their prospects at work.

But surely we have to get to a position where people can be as open about mental health as they are about physical health?

Anyway, I suspect Gabby's film is an early favourite for a Mental Health Media award this time next year.

Meanwhile at the other end of the caring, sharing, understanding-other-people employment spectrum, I ask you this question ....

If, while I was working for Tony Blair, it had emerged that whilst a journalist I had been responsible for a dreadful case of bullying, and that my paper had had to shell out more than three quarters of a million pounds in compensation to someone who blamed me personally for the bullying, do you think the papers might have covered it?

Yes, I thought so.

Do you think I might have been chased around by the media to explain myself? Do you think TB would have had to explain himself too? Do you reckon it might have been raised in Parliament by Tory MPs? Yep, so do I.

Or, to put it as the one journalist who seems to be taking an interest in it, The Guardian's Roy Greenslade, says:

'Imagine for a moment that a bank employee in the City of London was awarded £800,000 for unfair dismissal after a lengthy period of bullying by his or her boss. I haven't the slightest doubt that it would be a major news item in every newspaper - from the Financial Times to the Daily Star.

'Or how about this? Imagine The Guardian being required to pay out £800,000 to a journalist because its editor had been exposed as a bully. You can bet that would have made headlines in rival papers.

'So why, I wonder, was The Guardian the only national paper to report on the fact that former News of the World football reporter Matt Driscoll was awarded £792,736 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination by an employment tribunal?'

It is a very good question. Roy, my former boss at the Mirror, thinks that it is all part of the 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' conspiracy of silence between the major newspaper groups, who do not wash each other's dirty linen in public, whilst thinking anyone else is fair game.

But it is also part of the media's growing bias against using stories that might be difficult or embarrassing for David Cameron.

Because the journalist-editor in question is Andy Coulson, ex News of the World, now Cameron's communications director.

Even without the media angle, or the Cameron angle, this case should be big news because it is a record payout, the biggest ever ordered to be made to a media group.

But it is the media angle and the Cameron angle that has led to the virtual news blackout.

This in the week that several of the papers are screaming their indignation that the public inquiry on Iraq is deemed by them not to be open enough.

Not just News International, for which Coulson used to work, but the Mail, Mirror, Telegraph, Independent, Express, FT, the whole lot of them, decided a record payout for bullying and discimination made against someone who is now right-hand man to the man who could be our next Prime Minister, decided it was not worth a single line of copy.

As Roy points out, the Mail and the Telegraph are always reluctant to carry anything critical of Rupert Murdoch's operations. But this one has gone right across the board.

And because the broadcasters tend to allow their agenda to be set by the papers, we have another 'protect Dave' news blackout. If we had a media that was genuinely free and fair, it is what they might term a scandal.

I am out tonight recording the voiceover for a new official Burnley FC DVD - stay with me, stay with me, this is not another Burnley blog, I promise.

I'm just hoping I get back in time for Inside Sport on BBC1 at 1045, which has a feature on depression in sport.

From the trailers I have seen, with clips from cricketer Marcus Trescothick, boxer Frank Bruno and footballer Neil Lennon, it could be an important moment in the continuing efforts to break down the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness.

And given the recent suicide of depressive German goalkeeper Robert Enke, it could not be more timely in shining a light on mental illness in the macho world of professional sport. It holds such an important place in the national life, and is no different to any other in terms of having people with mental health problems.

BBC programmes won a stack of awards at the Mind Mental Health Media awards at BAFTA in Piccadilly last night, and their Headroom campaign has already made an important contribution to changing the way mental illness is covered and therefore discussed.

Newsnight, for a report on mental illness in Parliament, Radio 4's You and Yours and the radio drama 'Do's and Don'ts' for the mentally interesting, all received awards.

EastEnders received the Making a Difference award for their ongoing commitment to mental health issues. Actresses Lacey Turner and Gillian Wright, who play mother and daughter Stacy Branning and Jean Slater, both diagnosed with bipolar disorder, collected the award. I know EastEnders are on the shortlist for another one next week, at RADAR, because I am due to present it.

Last night I was also very proud to be on the receiving end, and pick up the award for best full-length documentary for my BBC2 film, Cracking Up, on my breakdown in 1986. For anyone who hasn't seen it, and would like to, it is up in four parts in the vlog archive of the website.

One of the reasons I made the film, and why I am involved in the 'Time to Change' campaign, is that when I was recovering, I found it helped to know there were people out there who had been through something similar. The sports stars who speak out tonight will find all sorts of people coming up to them afterwards to say they, a friend, or a relative have had something similar happen to them.

It is why I sometimes think the 'One in Four' figure - one in four of us will directly experience some form of mental illness - may be a conservative estimate.

But as I said last night, I think we are potentially close to a tipping point in terms of having proper understanding of mental illness. The more that people speak out about it, the more normalised the debates should become so that eventually admitting a mental illness is no different to mentioning flu, cancer or a broken leg.

For the sake of completeness - SC4-BBC's Welsh language soap Pobol Y Cwm won the Soap Award for its portrayal of post-natal depression. The Raising Public Awareness award went to the Health Promotion Agency in Northern Ireland for its 'Don't cover up your problems' campaign targeted at young men to raise awareness of mental health and STV won the Drama category for the series Cracked set in a residential rehab clinic. The Young People's Media award was won by Teachers TV/Mosaic Films for a series of short animated films narrated by young people who have experienced a range of mental health problems.

Channel 4's 'Insanity of war: Unreported world' won the award for Short Television Documentary; reporter Seyi Rhodes reported from Sierra Leone where thousands of people have been left severely traumatised from the brutal conflict ten years ago, but where there is only one psychiatrist.

And the Speaking Out award went to Tom Perry, Alastair Rolfe and Mark Payge who spoke to the documentary Chosen about their experience of being abused as children at a prep school.

The economy is always fundamental to any election, and the debates upon it therefore central to the choice faced by voters.

So yesterday, with all three main party leaders speaking to the CBI, was a useful and surely newsworthy opportunity for the leaders to set out their stalls, and for the public get a chance to hear what they were saying.

Well, you'd have thought so. Then again, you might have relied on the BBC 10 o'clock news. Not a word. Not one single word. No Brown. No Cameron. No Clegg.

In so far as there was an economic story, it was a puff piece by Nick Robinson on a shopping trip with shadow chancellor George Osborne who seemed to be saying he could solve the deficit and save the planet by getting government departments not to leave the lights on at night.

Ok, it wasn't quite as interesting as that, and my viewing was disturbed by my own repeated exclamations to Fiona on the lines of 'what about the CBI? Is this it? Are they not even bothering with it, not one word?' 'It's like those advertising features we used to do on the Sunday Independent,' was as near as I got to a response.

There may well be some newsworthy elements to Osborne's 'green economy' plans being set out today. But to elevate a puff piece trailer ahead of any coverage whatever of three significant speeches by party leaders on the future of the UK economy was a misjudgement.

I don't doubt that online and on screen, the BBC will have covered the CBI. Indeed I tweeted yesterday on a report online which stated that it was only when Cameron spoke that the audience got 'fired up,' a totally subjective judgement presented as fact.

But most people who have a genuine interest in what GB, David Cameron and Nick Clegg had to say yesterday, and who watched the main evening bulletin, are unlikely to have been living in that media bubble which assumes everyone is following the debates closely as they unfold.

Surely if there is one place where you should be able to expect at least some coverage of an event at which all three leaders made speeches to business leaders on the economy, it is the BBC 10 o'clock news?

Their speeches were substantial, policy-laden, and politically interesting, in GB's case because he was setting out his analysis of different approaches to the economic crisis and to how we assist the recovery, in Cameron's case because he was seeking to recalibrate the austere message of his Party conference with an addtional focus on growth. Throw in a clip from Clegg and the praise of the head of the IMF for GB's handling of the crisis, and there was the makings, surely, of an intelligent and informative package, with or without the usual two minutes of unneeded punditry at the end.

But we got none of that. We got Osborne joking about the deficit with a B and Q till assistant, and Robinson thinking that if he asked soft questions is a mildly agressive tone, we'd think it was a tough interview. It was a puff piece pure and simple. Well done to the Tory spin department.

And is there anyone, highish up in the BBC, who might today at least ask the question - why their main bulletin decided not to bother with even a nanosecond's coverage of something that surely started the day as a guaranteed item high up the running order?

As

If a clutch of business groups had attacked an important Labour policy when we were in Opposition, I think you would have heard of it. Front page news, ramped across the TV channels, you'd have heard it.

Had the CBI, The British Chambers of Commerce and the EEF manufacturers' group all attacked our decision to introduce Regional Development Agencies, for example, you'd have heard about it. Nationally, regionally, it would have been a big issue.

So why is the business position on the Tory decision to remove them considered to be so insignificant, especially given it is so clear? I think we know the answer. It is the same answer that explains the sense of irritation at yesterday's Observer poll showing the Tory lead down to six. How dare the public have a different take on the political scene to the pundits? Line to take - it is a 'blip.'

Getting into a bit of Orwellspeak, the Tories say their decision is motivated by the desire to 'give power back to local people,' letting councils build enterprise partnerships which would take over the RDAs' main functions.

The CBI view? - strategic decisions need to be taken at a higher level than councils. The voice of business will not be heard.

The British Chamber of Commerce? - business needs something in between Whitehall and local authorities to plan a strategic approach to infrastructure.

The EEF? - local authorities lack the ability or the funds to identify and meet priorities for a region.

There are plenty of successes the RDAs can point to, individually and as a group, to justify their existence. But the Tories' big thing is to cut down the State, and they see this as an easy target. They care more about the ideological attack upon 'big government' than they do about the possible impact on regions, several of which previous Tory governments decimated economically.

I can understand if they don't want to listen to me. But you'd have thought they might listen to the CBI, the CofC and the EEF.

Both GB and Cameron are making speeches to the CBI today. Perhaps someone will ask them to explain their very different positions.

Having taken a potshot at David Cameron for hiring a personal photographer, I suppose I ought to be pleased that this has landed him in a spot of bother.

But I'm afraid I cannot get wound up over the complaint by Westminster Abbey that Cameron and Gordon Brown had their pictures taken without permission in the Field of Remembrance on Armistice Day.

That this is a prominent story on the news this morning, complete with apologies from Downing Street and Mr Cameron himself, merely underlines the extent to which an anti-politics and anti-politician mood has taken hold.

Anyone who cares to take a whack at the politicians - in this case someone at the Abbey - will get a ready and supportive audience in large parts of the media. If they can weigh in with the charge that they are indulging in 'a photo opportunity', even better.

Gordon Brown is the Prime Minister at a time UK forces are engaged in war. David Cameron is the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Far from being asked to apologise, I think they are entitled to say it is entirely appropriate that they should make such visits and pay such tributes at this time of year. It is also appropriate that the public get to know about it.

And given the various parliamentary and other events to commemorate the World Wars, notably the Cenotaph ceremony, and the extent to which the issue of Afghanistan has dominated public debate of late, neither man is really in need of the additional coverage their visits to pay tribute may have yielded.

In fact there has been more coverage of them this morning already, as part of the 'apology story', than there was at the time. How long before it becomes 'Poppygate'?

On the polls, and particularly the one showing the Tory lead cut to six points, they merely underline what I have been saying here for months - the Tories are not home and dry. If Labour get their act together properly - on defending the record, taking the attack to the Tories and winning arguments about the policy agenda for the future - the game is still on.

Because whilst lots of people may cite lots of reasons for not wanting another Labour term, there is no great enthusiasm for the Tories.

There is also a growing fear that beneath the surface of Cameron's presentational skills, (without doubt better than Michael Howard's and Iain Duncan Smith's) his Party is fundamentally unchanged. Right-wing, out of touch with the way most people live, run by an elite, and ready to run the country for an elite.

If you need any reminder of the challenge facing Ed Miliband as he works for a deal at the Copenhagen climate change summit, look no further than today's interview in the Financial Times with the elected mayor in Ed's Doncaster seat.

Peter Davies surprised even himself when he was elected mayor standing for English Democrats, winning support for his anti-European, anti-immigration, pro-capital punishment views. The fact that he will not have the power to bring back the death penalty for pro-European immigrants in Doncaster is neither here not there. He was elected and now has considerable powers to make life better or worse for the people of Doncaster.

It is his views on the environment that show how far Ed has to go before building a consensus view on the importance of tackling climate change. Davies is seeking to reverse a policy of encouraging more people to use public transport, by getting rid of the town's 'quality bus corridor.'

In tones reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's view that if you were still using public transport over the age of 30, you'd failed in life, Davies says 'People in cars spend more than people on buses. Why wouldn't we want them?'

Seeking to portray himself as the underdog, he says the shift will not be easy because 'we have arrayed against us the climate change alarmists and green fools, who want us all to eat lettuce and live in caves.'

Beware politicians who portray themselves as 'only speaking commonsense' and then talk utter bilge. Let me just repeat his line ... 'climate change alarmists and green fools, who want us to eat lettuce and live in caves.' A nice line for a climate-change denying colimnist in a right-wing tabloid maybe, but as the intellectual basis for an important policy choice, I'm not sure is stacks up.

Elsewhere in the FT, their Weekend Magazine front cover story is based on interviews with climate change scientists, and one sceptic who thinks, as Davies appears to, that the whole climate change argument is a con.

The views of the other scientists are worth reading. At least, unlike Davies with his lettuce and caves, they are based on research and fact, not prejudice and anecdote.

And whilst I imagine the people of Cumbria have more pressing things to do with their time today than put up their feet and read the FT, the link between what they are having to cope with post-flood, and the arguments put forward by some of the scientists, seems pretty compelling to me.

So my good wishes remain with Ed Miliband as he strives for progress at Copenhagen. And with the people of Doncaster that they don't regret too much the choice they have made.

This must be one of the longest, and certainly the laziest, blog I have ever done. Just a bit busy you see.

I was doing a speech to sports governing bodies in The Midlands yesterday, so took the opportunity to visit my Mum, stayed over, raced back this morning for a meeting then a dental appointment (soon, so am petrified, see below), then a lunch, a couple of meetings, a couple of articles, a few calls, and I don't really have time to do a proper blog.

So instead I have cut and pasted a couple of interviews I've done recenly. The first is for a new website, Chic Londres, which is aimed at French people living in the UK (and funnily enough another thing on my agenda today is writing a piece for a French magazine about Sarkozy, in which I intend to refer to his election campaign visit to London)

And below that, totally randomly you might think, is a piece from Kyodo News about my take on the new Japanese government. I told you I was dead big in Japan.

I have also tried to cut and paste the piece in yesterday's Independent when I talked about my education (plugging my role as strategist for the Npower Climate Cops contest to find the best young environmental campaigners). But I am having trouble with my buttons and I'm worried I am about to wipe out this already long and lazy blog if I persevere with my pathetic cutting and pasting efforts.

Meanwhile, still feel angry at Thierry Henry. The new holder of the record for group sex, having single-handedly fucked an entire nation. Sorry, I don't usually swear, as Malcolm Tucker would confirm.

Anywhere, here goes with this new form of lazyblog.

Here is Chic Londres

Once described as "the dark soul of Tony Blair" and "the real Prime minister" (surely some mistake - AC) -as his influence on the government was deemed to be so powerful- Alastair Campbell (52) appears nowadays in much more relaxed form than during his Downing Street years. The former Spin Doctor in chief, who has turned to writing and fundraising for research into leukaemia, talks candidly about his career change, his old demons and his fear of dentists.

How did you decide to become a novelist?

I was cycling one day when I saw an enormous crowd attending a funeral, which gave me the concept for the novel. Also at the time, I was seeing a psychiatrist and was thinking a lot about depression and addiction, which also contributed to the creation of my characters. When I arrived home, I had already created in my mind two of the characters and the ending. I went straight to my computer and started writing. I wrote the novel quite quickly, in about six months, and didn't tell anything to anyone, including my family, until it was finished.

You have been a journalist, a spin doctor and you are now a novelist: which job is the most difficult and which is the most fulfilling?

Being a journalist was the easiest of the three and being a spin doctor was both the most fulfilling and the most difficult job. It was tough and challenging but gratifying because I was part of a team which not only changed the country, but I believe changed it for the better. It is also very gratifying, though not as difficult, to write a novel, because you get to start something from scratch, created entirely from your imagination. Also, I was recently contacted by someone on Facebook, who told me that reading my book completely changed his view on mental illness, which was hugely rewarding for me.

The novel has been described as semi-autobiographical. How much of yourself have you put in the characters and is there one in particular you most identify with?

Several aspects of the characters are inspired from my own experiences. I suffer from depression, like most of them, and did myself some of the therapies I describe in the book. At times, I identified with the psychiatrist: when I was in politics, I was at the centre of the action, so -like him- I often had to guess what people were thinking. I also had a nervous breakdown, so I know how it feels to crack up, and this part of the novel is inspired from my own experience. The MP is an alcoholic, like I was. The way David feels and describes depression in the book is very much like mine, although unlike him, I was lucky enough to be able to do things with my life and not to be paralysed by my illness.

The novel shows a very sensitive side of your character, in sharp contrast to your public persona in politics: how did you manage to handle being vilified so much?

I believe you can be both very tough and very vulnerable at the same time. During my ten years with Tony Blair, I sometimes felt depressed, but always managed to isolate my personal state of mind from my job. But when I quit Number 10, I must say that it was very tough, as I suddenly had a lot of time to think and felt very depressed again. I was very active and kept myself very busy, but I felt I had no purpose and nothing I did seemed very gratifying. The book really helped me in that regard, in the sense that I realised it wasn't a problem anymore not to know exactly what I was going to do with my life, and that for the first time, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. The things I miss are also the things I don't miss: I miss having a sole mission, but I don't miss the constant pressure and the fact that I always had to leave choices to others. As for being vilified, it didn't really affect me or my kids, but it was tough for my mother. What I hated though was when I did a briefing, but that the journalists chose instead to talk about me rather than the policy.

What has been your most memorable moment at Downing Street?

The best moment, without a doubt, was the day of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. But when I look back at those ten years, I don't really think about good or bad times, more about the fact that we have achieved something that was very difficult.

For someone who has been used to being constantly surrounded by people, doesn't it feel lonely to be a novelist?

I sometimes feel a bit lonely, but I am fine most of the time. I don't mind my own company and can easily stay at my computer writing for eight hours straight. That said, I do like being part of a team, so enjoy meeting with my publisher and my agent.

What is your next move?

I am writing another novel, which is about the friendship between a famous actress and her best friend. I am working on the third draft so am almost finished now. (It is actually finished now. It is called Maya, the name of the film star - AC) I would really like to turn the novels into films, and maybe write the scripts myself. But I also want to do different things in my life, and don't really have a career plan anymore.

Can you tell us something we don't know about yourself?

I am terrified of dentists and injections. Not long ago, I was at the hospital and when I saw the nurse approaching with the needle, I fainted.

All in the Mind (Hutchinson) is published in french under the title Tout est dans la tête (Albin Michel)

Alastair Campbell in Dates:

• 25 May 1957: Born in Yorkshire, one of four children of Scottish veterinary surgeon Donald Campbell and his wife, Elizabeth.
• 1979: Graduates from Cambridge University with a degree in modern languages. Spends a year in France as a university assistant and writes pornographic stories for magazine Forum.
• 1982-1994: Moves to London to work as a journalist and then as political editor for The Daily Mirror and Today.
• 1986: Hospitalized after a nervous breakdown triggered by alcoholism and stress.
• 1987: Birth of the first of his three children (now aged 21, 19 and 14) from partner Fiona Millar.
• 1994: Becomes Tony Blair's press secretary when the latter is elected leader of the Labour Party.
• 1997: Nominated Prime Minister's Chief Press Secretary and Official Spokesman by Tony Blair after the Labour Party's victory.
• 2001: Nominated Director of Communication and Strategy by Tony Blair.
• 2003: Resigns during the Hutton inquiry (which eventually clears him in relation to the suicide of Professor David Kelly).
• 2003-2007: Volunteers as chairman of fundraising for Leukemia Research, writes articles on sports for The Times.
• 2007: Publishes The Blair Years (Random House), part of his diaries at Downing Street from 1994 to 2003, which becomes an instant bestseller.
• 2008: Publishes his first novel All in the Mind (Hutchinson) and broadcasts Cracking Up, a documentary on BBC2 on his nervous breakdown in 1986.
• April 2009: All in the Mind Translated in French (Tout est dans la Tête).

• And here is the one from KYODO NEWS

• FOCUS: Hatoyama gov't makes encouraging start, says ex-Blair media chief

  by  William Hollingworth

  The new Japanese government has improved the way it communicates with the public and is starting to stand up to the once all-powerful bureaucracy, according to the man who once served as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's media chief and who gave advice to the ruling Democratic Party of Japan on strategy before the general election.
  Alastair Campbell says he ''senses'' the new DPJ-led government is delivering clearer messages to voters and can see the government is employing some of the techniques and structures that were used by the former British prime minister when his center-left Labour party came into office in 1997.
  Before taking the reins of power in mid-September, the DPJ was keen to look at how other parties made the transition into government, particularly after a long spell in opposition. The Liberal Democratic Party had ruled Japan for over half a century.
  DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa met Campbell and other Labour officials to see how they made their mark in government.
  Campbell, who acted as Blair's chief spokesman and media strategist between 1994 and 2003, told Kyodo News that Ozawa and his team were particularly interested in how to deal with the civil service.
  Critics have argued that Japanese public officials have wielded too much influence over policy formulation with ministers effectively rubber-stamping what has been decided by bureaucrats, individual lawmakers and various vested interests.
  Campbell explained, ''I said that in my experience the civil service machine responded well to clear leadership.
  ''I emphasized that any new government has a period when interest in, and support for it, is at its height, and it is vital to use that time well.
  ''I emphasized the need to win external and internal support for change. My impression is that the Japanese civil service is more driven by its own agenda than ours, so it is doubly important the public understands the nature of the changes proposed and the reasons.''
  Campbell said Ozawa was ''very well informed'' about the structural changes Blair had made to government, ''in particular the strengthening of the center.''
  And Blair's former adviser can see aspects of this being replicated in Japan, despite the very different political cultures.
  Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has sought to end the influence of individual lawmakers and bureaucrats in policymaking and instead promoted the Cabinet as the main policy-formulating body.
  The new government has developed a series of Cabinet committees to help policy formulation - a mechanism imported from Britain. The new National Policy Unit, headed by Naoto Kan, deputy prime minister, is also designed to bolster the center by creating ''national visions.''
  Campbell said, ''They wanted a detailed analysis of how we made those (structural) changes (to strengthen the center) and what effect we felt they had. I briefed them on our meetings structures, forward planning functions, liaison within the government and also some of the structures we set up during major international crises.''
  The DPJ has also taken a close look at how Labour presented its case to the electorate in the election manifesto. In 1997, Labour produced an eye-catching card for voters which listed five specific pledges designed to counter the impression that politicians are all hot air.
  And this summer, the DPJ paid great importance to its manifesto with a series of pledges.
  Campbell, who has published ''The Blair Years,'' said, ''The impression I gained was of people with a clear agenda for change but who knew that sometimes promising change is easier than making it happen.
  ''But I also sensed a real determination. I suppose if there was a single message I sought to impart it was the importance of clarity of objective, toughness of strategy and the necessity of clear leadership and teamwork.''
  Now that the DPJ is in office, Campbell ''senses'' an attempt by the government to be more ''strategic in communications'' and to give ''sharper and clearer messages.''
  He believes the new government will need to constantly explain to the electorate the changes that are being made and why.
  Christopher Hood, an expert in Japanese studies at Cardiff University, agrees the DPJ has taken a leaf out of Labour's book, in terms of communicating clear pledges to voters.
  He said, ''The DPJ seems to be getting sharper at this. This has been a general weakness in Japanese politics in the past so I would say it's a refreshing change.
  ''Having said that, I think the DPJ will find and, in relation to dams for example, may already be finding, that sometimes reality steps in and they have to rethink pledges.''
  The DPJ's policy of suspending and reviewing the construction of new dams across the country has been deeply unpopular in some municipalities.
  Hood is unsure to what extent British practices can be introduced into Japan given the different political cultures and the long tradition of an all-powerful bureaucracy.
  ''I think the shift to reduce the influence of the bureaucrats will be an interesting one. If only Japan had a version of 'Yes Minister' and 'Yes Prime Minister' to watch!''
  These BBC comedy programs showed how powerful civil servants were in comparison to their hapless political masters.
  Kyodo

And if you got to the end of all that ... you need to get out more. Have a good weekend

Central London was heaving last night with happy, cheering, chanting, singing, flag-waving Algerians celebrating the win over Egypt that took them to the World Cup next year.

There is nothing quite like international sport, and particularly football, for generating that kind of traffic-stopping joy, which was being repeated by the Algerian diaspora around the world.

I was on my way home via a fundraiser for the Street Children World Cup, a brilliant idea to host a tournament in South Africa, just before the real thing, for teams of kids from different countries who live on the streets. It is another reminder of the power of football - this time to draw attention to, and push others to do something about, children with no home and no rights.

Hull City's Brazilian star Geovanni (still smarting from his sending off in their defeat at mighty Burnley) came down from Humberside and he, Jamie Redknapp and I did one of the onstage Q and As with compere Simon Mayo.

Jamie made the point that it is perhaps only after Premier League footballers retire that they fully realise the ability they have to be something more than be footballers, and help to use sport to drive change for others.

So there you have two scenes of the positive side of football. It almost made it bearable to miss the France-Ireland game.

And there we saw another side of football, and one that will have Irish people around the world feeling the exact opposite of the joy of those Algerians.

As for how Thierry Henry feels this morning, only he will really know. He should feel ashamed. But I doubt he will. Not when a nation is rejoicing at qualifying, and FIFA are breathing a sigh of relief that all the 'big' countries got through. 

I had been following the match with text messages from my sons, and was able to announce Robbie Keane's goal to the dinner. Later came the equaliser. Extra time. And then a torrent of texts about the winning 'goal' with plenty of references to cheating, and Henry suddenly converting to basketball.

I finally got to see it around midnight, and it was one of those incidents that made you feel sick. Heaven knows how the Irish coaches and players feel. To have worked so hard, and been the better team, and have it stolen like that, is too horrible to imagine. The pain will endure up to and beyond the tournament they deserve to be playing in next year.

I suppose the stakes are too high to imagine that France might do as Henry"s old boss Arsene Wenger did ten years ago, when Arsenal won unfairly in the FA Cup against Sheffield United, and they agreed the result should not stand, and the match be replayed.

Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni was clearly devastated but remarkably restrained whilst Henry's 'I am not the ref' defence adds him to a list of cheating sporting infamy headed by Diego Maradona. But at least Maradona was never made out to be a better human being than everyone else.

So if no action can be taken against Henry, or the dozy ref and linesman, or the French authorities who have now seen the replays, what can the rest of us do? Well, not a lot. But as I shaved this morning, I remembered those irritating Gillette ads Henry does with Tiger Woods and Roger Federer.

Why did he land a lucrative contract that? Because he is a great footballer and he has a good image.

Half shaved, I dumped my Gillette razor in the bin and have been down to the shop to buy a non Gillette replacement.

If enough people do it, and Gillette get to hear about it, maybe he'll get dropped and lose one of the noughts off his bank balance. He won't care that much, I don't suppose. He certainly wouldn't hurt as much as the Irish players will today. But sometimes, futile gestures are all we have.

Off to tell Fiona we may have to get rid of the Renault Clio. Va va voom indeed - French for anything goes. Cheat.

So GB has suggested that the Tories' inheritance tax pledge is the first tax cut in history where those proposing it will personally know those who stand to gain.

I think this should be put to the test. Can we not have a list of the 3000 estates who will make six figures and more from Dave and Gideon's plan? Can we not then send the list to D and G, with a D column for Cameron to tick if he knows them, and a G box for Osborne. Then alongside that a TPD box, to be ticked if those on the list are Tory Party donors.

According to that reliable source known as the Labour Party, Gideon stands to make half a million smackers out of the move. They have even set up a nice IHT calculator on the Party's website, at http://www.labour.org.uk/home

So that's a tick in the G box and the D box. I know him too, a bit, so I'll have my own AC box, but not being much of a Kensington and Chelsea moving and shaking type, I reckon I will be well behind D and G.

Sadly I was travelling when GB and DC were locking horns. Hard to tell from the media who did best, which suggests it must have been GB. When Dave does well, (in their opinion) the instant talking head blatherers make sure we know about it.

I am a little disturbed about Dave's attitude to the whole thing. I see in the pre-match skirmishes he described today's procedings as 'a waste of time.'

This is most odd for someone who wants to be PM and therefore, we have to assume, has an interest in politics.

He is entitled to disagree with the proposals in the Queen's Speech, or to say that they do not meet current needs, or to say that had he the chance, he would set out a very different agenda.

But you can't say the measures on care for the elderly, or dealing with the banks, or energy needs, or inequalities, or parenting checks for mums and dads of unruly kids do not have at least some political and policy significance.

Ah, they say, but this is all about winning votes not meeting the needs of the country! Yeah, like that Flood and Water Management Bill ought to see the Don't knows and the Disaffected rushing back to Labour!

Instead Cameron just dismisses it all as a waste of time.

How does he think that makes The Queen feel, having to dress up and travel in a coach and wave and sit on the throne and read out the speech, when the leader of her Loyal Opposition thinks we should not have bothered?

What I think his attitude reveals, or confirms should I say, is an aversion to policy. In Opposition TB used to look upon QS day as an opportunity to critique the government and set out an alternative vision and agenda.

Cameron can't be bothered with the second bit. Policy? Bills? Do me a favour, I've got a photocall to attend to.

I reckon if Simon Cowell gave him a call and said 'hey Dave, Piers Morgan is too big for my Britain's got talent' show now and I'm looking round for a new judge for the next series, do you fancy it?' he'd be off like a shot.

I bet Simon's on the 3000 list. Gordon knows him. So in the interests of fairness we should have a GB column alongside D, G and TPD.

GB is bound to know a few of them I guess, what with having been Chancellor for a decade. But at least he does not allow his policy to be dictated by them, nor ever forget that he in politics to help the many, not the few at the top who can take care of themselves.

After yesterday's rebuttal of the FT Deutschland, I come a bit closer to home today, to rebut a piece that has popped up in my inbox from the Evening Standard.

A better paper since Boris's wannabee arts supremo (ahem) Veronica Wadley was despatched from the editor's chair, the Standard's writers could nonetheless do with honing their fact-checking skills.

The piece by Sarah Sands refers to the Queen's Speech set out by GB 'yesterday.' What was that old line about picking up a paper and not believing the date beneath the masthead?

It's today, dear.

The article purported to be about electoral strategy and 'revealed' that 'Alastair Campbell' (that's me) 'had confided to a left-leaning friend of mine' (that's Sarah) 'that the strategy is simply to contrast GB's reliable manliness with the unfamiliar and effete Tories.' I have no idea who the left-leaning friend is. What I do know is that I have never said such a thing. Had I done so, it would mean I have lost any sense of strategy that I might have had.

'Vote for GB - he steered us through the crisis and shaves twice a day. Not DC who is all rosy-cheeked and we don't know much about him.'

The steering through the crisis bit - fine. He has. But elections are about the future as well as the past and the strategy as set out to SS's 'left-leaning friend' has none of that. As for Cameron, 'unfamiliar' - yes - so far as a body of policy is concerned. But 'effete and unfamiliar' actually fits more closely the Tory strategy, which is 'look, I know we don't have many policies but isn't it really time for a change, and you have to admit Dave is not as scary as Michael Howard and all the other post-Major dorks?'

So the Labour strategy, far from playing into this, as 'effete and unfamiliar' does, has to take the deliberate concealment of policy and communicate the risk that the Tories will pose - to living standards, public services, our standing in Europe, and the advances Britain has made culturally.

I accept it is harder when they are refusing the put out much policy. By the time of the last Queen's Speech when we were in Opposition, we had something close to a manifesto full of policy out there. It is one of the reasons we won as big as we did.

But there is enough policy for us to guess what kind of government they would be. We got a taste of the scale of Gideon Osborne's public services cuts, and where he would like to apply them, in his Conference speech.

And we get a clear sense of their values and priorities from the fact that their one absolute tax pledge is the one to cut inheritance tax for the 3000 wealthiest estates in the country.

The more I think about their commitment to it, the more I think they have had to promise it in return for donations somewhere down the fundraising line. Because politically it is a no brainer. And it is all too familiar.

Final point of rebuttal for Ms Sands. She says I have described The Thick of It as 'boring rubbish.' Again, I have said no such thing. I have said - because it is what I believe - that I got bored watching In The Loop, the film based on it.

I find The Thick of It very funny, and think the new minister is a great addition.

Rebuttal over. Have a nice day.

Back to the depression front today, with two very different stories to report from different parts of the world.

First from Australia, where senior politician Kevin Foley has held an emotional press conference to 'confess' that for several years he has been treated for depression. South Australia's Labour deputy Prime Minister and finance minister, Foley 'came out' after Opposition spokesman spokesman Steven Griffiths questioned his mental fitness to do the job.

Then from Germany, and a dreadful article by someone called Lucy Kellaway of Financial Times Deutschland. Yes, that's Deutschland as in Germany, where following the suicide of depressive German goalkeeper Robert Enke last week, you might have expected a bit more sensitivity.

Instead, Kellaway wrote a glib piece which concluded - totally wrongly - that is it 'best to stay schtum' about mental illness in the workplace. 'The truth is that given our ignorance and squeamishness about mental health, it is probably better to shut up about it,' she says. If this is 'the truth', God help us. Ignorance and squeamishness are there to be challenged, not pandered to and surely, if there is one thing Enke's tragic death tells us, it is that being open is better than trying to keep mental illness secret.

Kellaway says she can think of only four people who have been publicly open about their mental illness - Stephen Fry, me, Norway's former PM, Kjell Magne Bondevik, and businessman Dennis Stevenson. She says Stephen doesn't count because he is a national treasure, I don't count because I have a reputation for being hard and mean, and Bondevik doesn't count because he is Norwegian! She is not entirely clear why Dennis does count and the rest of us don't, but there we are. I did warn you it was glib.

Time to Change, the mental health campaign aimed at breaking down stigma and discrimination, has written a letter of complaint to FT Deutschland, whose headline asked 'why does mental illness still remain taboo?' The answer lies in articles like Kellaway's.

It is the same stigma which stopped Kevin Foley talking about it before, and made his opponents think he could be attacked for it. If my experience is anything to go by, Foley will still get depression, but he will not regret his new found openness. He can also be a fifth name for Ms Kellaway to trot out the next time she embraces a subject she does not understand, and to which her article contributed nothing but evidence of how much further we have to travel before the work of Time to Change is done.

Congratulations to young (I know it sounds patronising, but it is kind of relevant) Ellie Gellard who is today enjoying the sweet taste of campaign success. To people with political blood flowing through their veins, there are few better feelings.

Ellie started the online campaign to persuade the Labour powers-that-be to choose, as their next party political broadcast, a film that was shown at Labour's conference shortly before GB walked onto the stage.

I was very happy to support the idea, not least because the film, Against The Odds, was made by Mark Lucas and his team at Silverfish, the same people who designed this website and do the films and vlogs I put up from time to time. So congratulations to them too.

Ellie, whose Twittername is BevaniteEllie, is big on values in politics, and rightly thinks the film shows the link between Labour values and progress made by and for Britain down the years.

As I said on Saturday, it covers the fight against fascism, Labour¹s commitment to the NHS and the battle against apartheid. There's the peace that TB sought to bring to Northern Ireland. Rights for workers, Sure Start, the minimum wage, cancelling debt to developing countries. This and more, none of which could have been achieved without being in government. How did we get into government, not just in 1997 but at any time? By fighting against the odds.

The main parties get a broadcast around the time of The Queen's Speech, so Ellie's campaign was timely. Its outcome will also save a few bob for the Party, able as it is to take this film off the shelf. But as the government sets out its legislative programme for the future, that is as good a time as any to remind ourselves what through our values we have achieved in the past.

And why is Ellie's relative youth relevant? Because if she can be inspired by Labour's history, and its relevance to today, so can others.

I am reading 'The Audacity to Win,' by David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager. It is a terrific read, but one of the things that most impressed me was their commitment to, and belief in, empowering young people within the campaign. We could do with a bit more of that in UK politics. Ellie's campaign victory is a step in the right direction.

Congratulations too, this time of a wholly ironic nature, to William Hague and his fellow Conservatives in helping to block Tony Blair as the first President of the European Council, thereby in all probability paving the way for Belgian PM Herman van Rompuy.

That would be the same HvR who told the secretive Bilderberg group of politicos, bankers and businessmen of the need for new EU wide taxes. Mr Hague has reacted rather angrily to this. 'Advocacy of such a policy is not a fruitful use of anyone’s time,' he says. Not nearly as fruitful as campaigning to get the wrong man in the wrong job, eh Willy?

Well, we got a good little debate going yesterday on the back of my blog on Fiona's exchanges with Toby Young on Sky News over his plans to set up a new school.

Amid the differences of opinion btween them was a shared disdain for the angst of middle-class parents who support State education in theory but in practice believe that their children are so special and so different that they have to go private.

This is an angst common to many media people, and has a substantial skewing effect on coverage of state schools, which in turn fuels the angst, which in turn leads to more parents feeling they have to go private, which in turn weakens the support for, commitment to, and parental commitment within State schools.

So today I would like to give over the blog to a contribution on Facebook yesterday, from someone called Nicki Hodges.

'I have three children in state schools,' she says. 'All doing very well. My nine-year-old has a reading age of 11 and four months; my 15-year-old is applying to do the International Baccu(something) at Sixth Form. They've been to very ordinary East London state schools and are doing really well. This fuss middle-class people make is just because they don't  want their children going to school with hoodies, shock horror. In fact, there is far less of a drugs problems at state schools, with pushers targeting the private kids who have more money.'

Interesting observation. Sort of makes sense, in a market economy kind of way. Meanwhile, having had two children get to good universities via local state schools, from nursery to secondary, and a third well on the way, I am in no doubt that inner city comprehensives, for all the challenges, give kids the opportunities to be far more rounded and grounded than do the schools that so many middle-class parents skimp and save for in the belief they are buying a better education.

Well done to Fiona Millar - I shall declare an interest shortly - in her just televised debate with Toby Young, who wants to set up his own school in West London.

Ah yes, it was that Fiona, the one I have lived with for 30 years? As readers of The Blair Years will know, those 30 years have had their fair share of arguments, and in case Toby finds himself in the position of arguing with her again, I can give him a bit of advice.

First off, be sure of your ground, and don't leave room for factual correction. She's lethal when you get your facts wrong.

Also, don't shift your ground, because she will spot it quickly, and seize on it. It was blatantly obvious to anyone who read your original articles on this idea that you have indeed shifted your ground to try - unsuccessfully I fear - to deal with the charge that taking State money for your project will require funding to be shifted from other schools which happen to be improving while serving a broader catchment that the Tories' planned 'free schools' will.

And come on Toby, I know it is Sunday morning, and you probably want to be out with the kids somewhere on a nice autumn London day like this rather than talking to Adam Boulton on Sky, but it was a bit embarrassing that Fiona was so evidently more familiar with the Ofsted reports on your local schools than you are. I can indeed vouch for the fact that she was up at 7 am reading them.

Nor was your case helped by the innuendo suggesting that hers was weakened by the use for her own children  of Camden School for Girls. If you're going to play the (wo)man, not the ball, then for heaven's sake do a bit of research.

For 66.6 recurring per cent of our kids, Camden School for Girls would have been an odd and difficult choice for their secondary education, as they are boys. For the remaining 33.3 per cent, our daughter, though there would be nothing wrong with her going to Camden, as it happens she doesn't, because as the boys did before going to university, she attends the comprehensive school nearest to home. These are choices none of us have ever regretted, despite the swirls of middle class angst about (vastly improved) State schools that so pollute this debate, so dominated in the media by editors and journalists who have chosen the private sector for their own kids, and distort their coverage to justify their choice.

So whilst freely accepting I am biased, I have to say I felt she won the debate easily, because she was sure of her ground, passionate about her beliefs, and unwilling to let either Toby or Boulton misrepresent her views.

I was not alone. In pinged an immediate text from my former Mirror colleague Alastair McQueen. Subtle as ever, he said 'Fiona is so much better on TV than you. And all of your wanked out politico pals. She would also run Question Time much better than the cretinous Dimbleby.' Like I say, he was always prone to hiding what he really thought behind diplomacy.

And then another, this time from someone in the News International high command who said 'Fiona was great on schools on Boulton. She rocks.' Something tells me they are not universally signed up to the 'Vote Dave' strategy down Wapping way!

Congratulations to Willie Bain on being elected as the Labour MP for Glasgow North East. The by-election result shows that where we fight we win.

I've been away in Austria for the past few days, and on my return I was struck by the number of people on Facebook and Twitter who have contacted me to ask me to sign up to a certain campaign.

A fellow Twitterer, Ellie Gellard  (in Twitterspeak she should probably be a Twellow, or since she's a Labour supporter, maybe she¹s a Twomrade) has started up a campaign to get one of the films made for screening at party conference shown on TV as a party political broadcast. 

The two and a half minute film, called Against the Odds, is here. Have a look. It's a powerful reminder of why Labour values matter and why, as we did in Glasgow North East yesterday, we need to fight to win. Defend our record, take on our opponents and set out our future vision.

For me the film is an encapsulation of what it means to be Labour. It covers the fight against fascism, Labour¹s commitment to the NHS and the battle against apartheid. There's the peace that TB sought to bring to Northern Ireland. Rights for workers, Sure Start, the minimum wage, cancelling debt to developing countries. There are more. All things we couldn't have done without being in government. How did we get into government, not just in 1997 but at any time? By fighting against the odds.

The polls and the papers may not be great for us right now, but if we can win a by-election at this point, with a majority of over eight thousand, that says there is very much a fourth term of Labour government to fight for. Against the Odds shows how, so often in the history of the Labour Party, we've come from behind to win. And as the film says at the end, "we can succeed, because we must."

I've signed up to Ellie's campaign, and I hope you do too. There's a Facebook group here and an online petition here. 

Ellie has also written about the film and her campaign at LabourList.

Just had a couple of very nice days in Vienna. Beautiful city, really clean. Spotted one piece of litter in an early morning run round the first district, which is the government and business area.

I was there to speak to spokesmen and women and political advisors from all the main government departments and the political parties. A spin symposium, critics of political and government communications would doubtless call it. But governments and major institutions around the world are having to come to terms with a totally changed media landscape.

I did my usual stuff, set out how we tried to adapt to the changed landscape by being more strategic in our comms, sufficient to help win three general elections and - whatever the media like to say - stay in with a chance of winning a fourth despite all the problems and the baggage that a long period in power inevitably brings.

I was there on the day Number 10 announced a review of relations with the media.

Good luck! I think it is fair to say that every time we tried to improve channels of communication, and improve political debate, the general media response was 'oh look, more spin.'

That went for putting briefings on the record, freedom of information legislation, the PM doing more extended interviews, or doing more daytime TV or 'non-news media,' and even when we instituted the monthly press conference. The problem with those, the Beeb's Nick Robinson said, was that Blair got so good at them 'they became boring.'

In other words, a PM communicating his own agenda on his own terms, and dealing with any question any journalist cares to ask ... no thanks. Give us gaffes, splits, rows, sensation and anything on 'our agenda' instead.  

Other leaders used to ask TB 'what on earth do you put yourself through those monthly press conferences for?' This in addition to PMQs and TB becoming the first PM in history to go before select committees.

So I say 'good luck' in that rather worldweary tone because my experience of the political media is that whatever is tried, they will say it is not enough, or they will find something in it to carp and criticise.

To be fair to Simon Lewis, the current PM's spokesman, he is at least trying to take the 'lobby' with him and his review has more journalists on it than representatives of the government.

That might work. But it does rather increase my fears that what emerges will suit the narrow interests of the Westminster media, which should never be confused with the interests of the public.

Where Number 10 is absolutely right is to realise that 24 hour news, the internet, blogs, youtube, twitter, facebook and all the rest have changed the media faster in recent years than at any time since the advent of the printing press and the invention of the wireless and the TV.

But journalists on the review need to be honest enough to admit the paradox that we have more media space than ever, but less genuine debate and less public understanding of major issues. And they have to admit they are every bit as much part of the problem as any politician or any spin doctor.

When I said this in an interview with an Austrian journalist, he appeared taken aback. To be fair, the Austrian media is not quite the feral beast we know and don't particularly love in Britain.

But the real spin doctors are owners and editors with an agenda, and the journalists who follow their line. The Sun has given us a very good example of spin in recent days.

One final point from Austria ... I had breakfast with representatives of the Social Democrats and the Conservatives who make up the Grand Coalition which currently forms the government.

Listening to them describe every day attempts to govern and to communicate has further strengthened my view that Proportional Representation would be a a disaster. One of those things that sounds great - 'everyone will feel their vote matters' - but risks ending up satisfying nobody.

I'm in Austria to make a speech and speak to government communications specialists.  

The news is wall to wall coverage of the dreadful suicide of top footballer Robert Enke, who had fought depression for years. I have no idea what channel I am watching but there is a calm and dignity to the coverage which adds profoundly to the sense of loss clearly felt right across Germany. 

Most moving of all a remarkable interview with his widow Teresa, speaking of how she always tried to be there for him, and aways lived in hope that he would one day be free of his illness. 

Politicians from Angela Merkel down are expressing their and their nation's grief. Footballers and coaches are doing the same, many saying they had no idea that the Hannover goalkeeper was ill, let alone liable to take his life. 

When news coverage gives way to pictures, set to music, of candles being lit and memorabilia being laid outside the Hannover stadium, and slow motion shots of Enke in action, you almost sense the makings of a Diana moment for Germany. 

It is certainly incredibly sad and nobody will ever know what was really going on inside his mind as finally he decided to end his life. 

But the only hope to be found in this horrible event  is the hope of greater understanding of a disease which is still surrounded by too much stigma and taboo.

In my newspaper reporting days on The Mirror, one of the worst calls to make was the one to the news desk saying 'The Sun's got the mum.'

The situation might be a court case, a serious crime, a have-a-go-hero rescue, or a human  interest story which suddenly flared up out of nowhere and captured the nation's imagination.

Today, I see 'The Mirror's got the uncle,' namely the uncle of Jamie Janes, the young Grenadier Guardsman.  whose mother Jacqui has become a big part of The Sun's increasingly vicious and highly personal campaign against Gordon Brown.

The uncle, Army veteran Ian Cox, strikes a very different tone to his sister, feeling that Jacqui Janes is being politically exploited in her grief, and also that the Prime Minister deserves an apology.

The circumstances for the family are bad enough, with the death of a loved one. But they become even worse if there are family divisions on how to react, all reported to suit the agenda of one paper or another.

The Sun, largely for its own commercial and marketing reasons, decided to come out for the Tories at Labour's conference.

They don't like to back a loser and will be worried that despite the battering Labour have taken, the Tories are far from home and dry.

The viciousness - and they will be hard pressed to say their coverage of the PM's letter has been anything short of vicious - is a sign of that worry. But precisely because they made such a splash with the switch to the Tories, their own readers, and the wider public, now know more than ever that their coverage is politically driven and totally biased against Brown.

Worse than that though, they continue to present themselves as the friend and supporter of the troops while their coverage over recent months has done much to undermine the war in which those troops are engaged.

Today of all days, they might reflect on that beyond the next 'get Brown' story.

Sorry - ok, no I'm not - to return to the day I got a call from the Telegraph asking for a quote on a poll showing Labour 37 points ahead.

But let's try to be inside the head of David Cameron. Let's reflect on the fact that we are in recession, with unemployment up and public spending cuts to some services certain. Politics has been dominated by MPs' expenses. British troops are involved, and some dying, in a difficult and protracted war with no end in sight and a recent surge in media and public opinion against it.

We have had the conference season, in which the Tories had a great chance to showcase their people and their policies to the nation. To help them, they have had the most uncritical and unquestioning media environment ever to surround an Opposition leader. They have had the Sun switch from Labour to Tory since when the anti-Labour bias has become stronger, most recently with the storm whipped up over GB's letter to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.

All this on the back of the inevitable 'time for a change' mood that is bound to develop when one party has been in power for 12 years.

And yet, last night Cameron's team took a call from The Times to tell them not of a growing poll lead, but one which has been cut to ten points.

No one poll tells a story, and the trend in the polls has had the Tories ahead for some time.

But if the current media mood reflected the genuine public mood, Cameron and Co would be out of sight.

So why aren't they? Because as I have been telling them for yonks, they have not done the strategic heavylifting required to indicate real change, and the public are not daft. They know the Tories have not really changed.

The recent spats on Europe, even with The Sun's news blackout on Cameron dropping the pledge of a referendum, have reminded people of that. So does their single tax pledge - to cut inheritance tax for the wealthiest estates in Britain. The longer they stick to that one, the more people will suspect a deal has been done with influential and wealthy backers somewhere along the line.

And they see too that whilst Cameron and his band of unknowns will pop up to criticise Labour every hour of the day, when the question is asked 'but what will you do?' answer comes there none.

Yesterday we had the latest example. Ed Miliband sets out the next steps for nuclear energy. Too late, cry the Tories. Ok, say the public, but if we vote for you, you're in within months. So what will you do? Er ...

Remember when Dave was changing his logo to a tree, sledging with huskies in the Arctic, putting a wind turbine on his roof, cycling to work (albeit with car behind trying to avoid the snappers) and saying 'vote blue, get green'? Every single one of those is a presentational tactic. But what is his environmental policy should be he PM? You don't know. Nor does he.  What is he saying should happen at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen? You don't know? Nor does he.

So on he goes, thinking a glib line here, a nice photo there, and he'll be home and dry. Who knows? Maybe with all the difficulties outlined above, he's right.

But I think the public, even if the media aren't, are starting to ask a few more questions and finding the answers somewhat deficient, if not, often, non-existent.

On GB's letter ... I have a few of those. I just dug out the one he wrote when my father died. He didn't have to, but he did. It is in the now familiar black felt pen. Some of the words are a bit difficult to read. 'Alastair' with 3 As looks suspiciously like 'Alistair' with 2 Is. But it talks about his feelings for his father, and his feelings when he died, and it was a nice gesture at a difficult time for me and my family.

Given all the other pressures on a Prime Minister's time, that meant something.

He will be mortified that anyone, least of all the grieving mother of a dead young soldier, might think he would be callous or disregarding of his sacrifice or their suffering.

Until a few weeks ago, the Sun would never have thought so either.

Out to another Labour fundraiser last night, this one for my local constituency, Holborn and St Pancras. And not for the first time I found myself extolling the virtues of sport as an inspiration for politics.

Eg - 'show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser' (John McEnroe). I also drew attention to Alex Ferguson's aftermatch interview in the wake of yesterday's defeat at Chelsea.

The interviewer suggested to the Manchester United manager that despite losing (to a goal scored from a free kick that should never have been given) he could take satisfaction from the fact that his team played so well. Fergie's look said it all. 'What planet are you on, man?' His words were a little more polite, but they made the same point - er, we lost, so no, it was not one of our best performances.

I also made the point that in sport, if you go out onto the pitch wondering how you are going to handle defeat, or whether you will get dropped from the team in the event of that defeat, then you've lost already.

So definitely lessons for politics there. Too many Labour people are talking and behaving as though the game is over, when whatever the polls and the media say, it is not.

Because everywhere you go, you get the same message - that whatever problems people may have with Labour, they are not rushing to embrace the Tories.

I gave my usual recipe for a political campaign - defend the record, attack your opponents and win the arguments on the forward policy agenda. On all three, Labour are stronger than the Tories, provided the party from top to bottom gets out on the pitch and plays like they think they can win.

Manchester United are now five points behind Chelsea in the Premier League. But does anyone think for one second that Fergie or his players woke up this morning thinking that the title is lost? No, they didn't. And nor should Labour think the election is lost, because doubts about the Tories are growing, just at the time they ought to be thinking about sealing the deal.

Is there no end to the cruelty of the Daily Telegraph in its coverage of MPs' expenses?

My God, they have only gone and published a detailed account of my exit from a celebrity (sic) edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Just when Fiona and I were finally getting over it. 

Why in the Telegraph today, you ask? It happened years ago. Surely anyone with a vague interest in seeing me fail saw or read about it at the time, or might have caught the occasional repeats people delight in telling me have been on since. 

Ah, but the big revelation is that the friend I phoned when we were struggling with an £8000 question was none other than Sir Ian Kennedy, the new chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. 

What, you mean this man has 'friends?' Gosh. But how can a man who has friends who once worked for Tony Blair possibly do a job properly? I know, I know, amazing isn't it? 'Certain to raise questions' (innuendo handbook cliche number 14) about his independence, I'd say (if I worked for the Telegraph, that is.).

'It can also be disclosed' (IHCN9) that Sir Ian had dinner as a guest of TB at Chequers. What? The man who had successfully led the review into Britain's rabies laws (yes, you dog-lovers have him to thank for being able to take your pets to France) and who chaired the Bristol babies inquiry was thought worthy of an invite to Chequers? Scandal. It is 'bound to raise suspicions' that Blair must have known there would be an expenses scandal one day, there would be a new regulatory body born of it, and he'd better get this Kennedy chap onside in case he lands the job. Banged to rights. 

The paper says David Cameron and Nick Clegg 'will almost certainly (ICHN 4) not have been aware of Sir Ian's links to the New Labour establishment when welcoming his appointment.' 

Yet they then somewhat undermine that possibility by publishing in copious detail  the references to Sir Ian in my diaries, when on holiday he gave invaluable advice in advance of the Hutton Inquiry. I cannot speak for Clegg but I have considerable evidence that Mr Cameron and his team are very familiar with my diaries. 

I can also 'disclose' that the first I knew Sir Ian was taking up this new post was when he had already been appointed, since when I have discovered he informed the panel which appointed him both of his friendships in politics and of his appearance in my diaries. So any questions it was 'bound to raise' with them had clearly already been raised and dealt with. 

He is indeed a friend, one who knows his own mind and will do any job asked of him well. (The words I gave to the Telegraph when they contacted me about their big scoop, but which appear not to have been included in their online coverage).  

Nor did my comment that I was 'disappointed' he did not know the answer when I phoned him from the Who Wants to be a Millionaire studio. 

It was a Valentine's Day couples special. Neither Fiona or I were terribly keen to do it in the first place. But the chance of a million for Leukaemia Research was too good to miss. But be fair, how is this an 8000 quid question. 'Which country launched the Skylab space station? France, Russia, Britain or America?' Got to be worth half a million. 

I can remember saying as the question popped up 'it won't be France because they would call it something French'. However, when we went to 50-50 and America and France were the two remaining, that thought had moved on, Ian was unsure, so were we, but as the US had the Apollo programme, we plumped for France. I could tell from the immediate Chris Tarrant smirk that we'd had it. 

So thanks to the cruelty squad at the Telegraph for bringing all that back. Thanks, more sincerely, for such generous plugging of The Blair Years. 

And well done to Ian Kennedy in continuing to want to contribute to public service, knowing that those who put their heads above the parapet might have potshots fired at them  from time to time. 

Gordon Brown is right today to be setting out - and he should keep setting out - the basic case for Britain's involvement in Afghanistan.

As Paddy Ashdown said yesterday, this war will not be won or lost militarily, but in the bars, sitting rooms and workplaces of those countries - democracies - who are contributing the soldiers putting their lives at risk.

So the democracies have to be persuaded, again and again, that the sacrifice and bloodshed is worthy of the cause. Not easy against the backdrop of a corrupt and widely discredited Afghan leadership being re-elected. Nor when we know so much of the drugs on our streets comes from there. Nor when an Afghan the British are training turns fire on them and adds to our war dead.

The current situation reminds me of an important moment during the Kosovo crisis when President Clinton and Tony Blair came to the view that however mightier, in military terms, Nato was against Milosevic's forces, the public opinion battle was being lost, putting the entire strategy at risk.

What's more, in some ways it was easier to explain Kosovo. Night after night TV was telling the stories of barbarism and butchery as people fled ethnic cleansing in their tens of thousands. Basic human sympathy was also matched by a hard-headed worry among leaders and public alike that today's refugees would become tomorrow's additional strain on EU countries like ours.

And even with those factors at play, it was hard enough.

Afghanistan is harder. The memories of 9/11 and 7/7, for many, are not as powerful as they were. The threat to troops on the ground is all too clear. The threat they are seeking to contain - terrorism fostered there then implemented here - is less clear, and when prevented it is invisible, so less easy to explain. The complicated politics of the region, Pakistan's as well as Afghanistan's, make it even harder.

But the other recollection I have from Kosovo is that when the explanation is clear, detailed, and co-ordinated across the countries involved, then the public will listen and understand, even when things go wrong.

As in so much else, the US have to take the lead. The decisions President Obama has in his pending tray are about as big as they get for a leader. That explains why he is taking his time.

As I said on a vlog here recently, I think Obama, facing a newly resurgent and pretty vicious Republican Party, is a good man doing a good job, and he deserves continuing support. But it is harder for Britain, and the other countries involved in Afghanistan, properly to explain the situation without the absolute clarity of strategy from the US.

As well as giving leaders space to explain, the public will also give leaders time to reach difficult decisions. But the US strategy needs that real clarity pretty soon. Then, as the military strategy unfolds, there has to be a concerted and internationalised communications strategy alongside it.

Nato v Milosevic, militarily, was like Manchester United against a Conference team. It is the same now, though the Taliban are in some ways an even tougher opponent than the Serbs back then.

But Ashdown is right that public opinion, in the collection of democracies involved, is where the strategy can be derailed.

So GB is right to be out there today, explaining. But it will become a lot easier for him and the other leaders involved when Obama has spoken clearly and definitively on the medium and the long term, and how the objectives for both are to be met.

David Cameron will be thinking he has just about got away with his Europe fandango. MEP Daniel Hannan resigns from a job few knew he had ... this is a low damage count.

Cameron may even be taking some comfort from the fact that the noisiest criticism of him appears to come from a Frenchman. Nothing like the Frogs to get the blue blood boiling.

But it would be a mistake. Because the comments of Pierre Lellouche, France's Europe minister, will represent the view, more or less colourfully, of President Sarkozy. They represent also, at least in part, the views of other European leaders who have frankly been bemused by Cameron's stance on Europe, most recently his outspoken efforts to undermine Tony Blair's chances of becoming the first President of the European Council.

The charge Labour must make stick against successive Tory leaders is that in failing to settle the Europe issue within their ranks once and for all, and in forever being in thrall to Thatcherite Euroscepticism at its most extreme form, they have allowed division to create weakness which in turn has harmed their influence.

Cameron parades as an agent of change yet on this issue, the change has not even reached the cosmetic levels of his other changes.

This is less important in Opposition than in government, but if Cameron becomes PM, then the influence diminution becomes a real problem.

So, given how much of a Prime Minister's work is tied up with Europe, it is worth taking a proper look at what Lellouche, like Cameron a conservative, has to say.

Cameron's plans, outlined yesterday, are 'pathetic.' They will not succeed 'for one minute.'

Easy to dismiss as the ramblings of a Frenchman. After all, the Tories will say over their steaks in their clubs, the Frogs have always been jealous of us ever since we saved them from the Nazis.

But Lellouche is a confirmed and committed Anglophile, one who goes on: 'It's just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map ... This is a culture of opposition ... It is the result of a long period of opposition. I know they will come back but I hope the trip will be short. They are doing what they have done in the European Parliament. They have effectively castrated UK influence in the European Parliament.' (This is a man charged with the art of diplomacy speaking here, not me).

He said he had told William Hague directly that their policy was one of marginalisation. Heavy stuff, and however much Hague says, as he did last night, that Lellouche does not speak for majority political opinion in Europe, I think he will find he does.

It is one more reason why, when Lellouche appears to be taking for granted the advent of a Tory government, the British public should continue to reflect on whether a weakened, marginalised, loathed Britain is what they really want to vote for.

It sounds ok after a few drinks, with a bit of xenophobia flowing. But in an ever more interdependent world, where the benefits of being in Europe far outweigh the disadvantages, it won't be very funny if it happens.

Deep down, I think Cameron knows that. But with the still mad party he leads, he cannot work out how to make it any different.

Congratulations to David Cameron ... now there's something you never thought you'd see on here. But I mean it. I'm impressed.

Turn to page 4 of The Guardian and you will see why. He is standing, in the middle of a London Underground carriage, clutching a sheaf of papers in one hand, and WRITING with the other. The man is a genius. Have you ever tried it? Writing while standing on a moving Tube train? The only time I ever did, I ended up lurching forward and headbutting an American tourist, creating a scene in which someone who had been eyeing me up ever since I got on at Pimlico, said loudly 'hey, aren't you Alistair Darling?'

I said not even Fiona calls me that any more, apologised to the Yank, and skipped out at King's Cross.

Maybe this is what sets true leaders apart ... the ability to stand AND write. Take a closer look at the picture if you can. There are five other people in it, including shadow defence spokesman Liam Fox who has the look of a man thinking 'surely there is more to political life than being an extra in one of Dave's subterranean photoshoots.'

All five of Dave's companions are holding on to the rail in the ceiling of the carriage. It is dark outside, so we must assume the train is moving between stations. But Dave is unperturbed. The hand is still. The pen is on the paper. The poppy is in place. The picture is perfect. And that's enough Ps.

Over in The Times, a different carriage, a different picture, page 13. Liam Fox is history. The other men in suits are gone too. Dave knows that for The Times, a different image is called for. Guardian readers are Tube-standers. Times readers are sitters. Central Office polling makes that very clear. So for The Times, we sit. But we have the same look, we have the same pen, we are looking at the same sheaf of paper, we are pretending to work in the same way.

The problem with this one is that there are more people in the picture. Not so easy to control as Liam. So the first thing I notice is that he is the only one wearing a poppy. Shouldn't he say something? But he is so intent on that piece of paper, and the pen in his left hand.

The second thing I notice is that the people opposite him are not looking at him. Very London. He should go up north more. Two people a few yards away are looking at him, warily, suspiciously even. Neither seem terribly impressed. They are probably thinking that he does not look like a regular on the Jubilee Line, that all that scribbling looks a bit posed and phoney and oh, there's a camera to make sure they get a picture of Dave on the tube.

So all in all, had I been Dave, or had I been advising Dave, I would have stuck with the standing picture.

But hats off, he has just performed a spectacular U-turn on Europe and here am I, something of a critic of the man, blathering away about his demeanour on a London Underground photocall.

Congratulations to The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh too. Something else you didn't expect to hear. I always worried that Trevor's utter obsession with Europe bordered on a mild form of derangement. But he appears to have been cured. And we can thank Dave for this too. Because now The Sun is backing him, when Dave says the 'cast-iron guarantee' of a referendum no longer applies, Trevor has to fall into line, the line being that it would be odd to be opening a fight with Europe when people are more worried about jobs and the economy. They always were Trevor, they always were.

I am pleased his obsession has been tempered. It is always sad though, to see the fight go out of someone, because the boss says it has to.

I just paid a visit to the Sun's online service, to see what they were doing with David Cameron's dumping of his 'cast iron guarantee' - made to the paper's readers - to hold a referendum on Europe. 

If you take the front page and the main news page together, I reckon you're looking at going on for around one hundred stories. Only one of them mentions Cameron - a photocall he did with Gary Lineker yesterday about a plan to give tickets for football matches and other major events to UK troops.

But unless I am going blind in my old age, I cannot see a single mention of the abandonment of the pledge made explicitly and exclusively to Sun readers, which may well have played a part in the paper's decision to switch their support from Labour to Tory, alongside some of the changes the Tories have made to their media policies, many of them uncannily similar to calls made by Sky boss James Murdoch.

But whether it did or it did not, surely it is news. Surely Sun readers, who according to columnist Trevor Kavanagh put Europe at or close to the top of their political interests, have an interest in following every twist and turn of this story as Cameron tries to bring some coherence to his incoherent policy, even if he does bottle out of the announcement himself, leaving it to William Hague to let down his fellow sceptics.

'Cast iron guarantee' is quite a big statement to make. So how can it not be big news when it turns out to have rusted?

It's a shame Alan Johnson became embroiled in the controversy over the sacking of a drugs policy advisor just as he was making an important speech on immigration.

I hope nonetheless that the Home Secretary's basic message gets through, because it suggests he 'gets it.'

As I know from my time trying to explain government policy, immigration is always a difficult and contentious issue. It becomes even more so, as history and our own experience tell us, in a time of economic difficulty. It is that which the extremists and bigots seek to exploit.

But if we condemn all who have concerns about immigration as extremists and bigots, or suggest they are wrong to be worried, we play into the hands of the real extremists even more.

I felt that on the Nick Griffin Question Time Jack Straw, in answering the question about whether concerns about Labour's 'failure' on immigration in part explained the BNP's relative rise in support, he could, while challenging the concept of 'failure,' have acknowledged more the concern.

It is true that the European elections took place with the expenses row at its height, but it was not the only issue to explain Labour's poor showing. 

Ministers are understandably frustrated that they believe they now have better immigration policies, but feel there is little understanding of what they are.

We had much the same problem, though admittedly in a better economic climate, in the run up to the 2005 election. So much so that then Tory leader Michael Howard made the gross strategic error of building his woeful campaign around the issue.

Our belief was that provided we explained the benefits of successive waves of immigration, provided we acknowledged concerns over the issue were not wholly owned by racists, admitted  that there was a downside as well as an upside to globalisation, and provided we devised polcies that were firm but fair, we could win the argument. Admittedly helped by Howard, we did.

In admitting we did not always get it right, and in admitting concerns were real and understandable, not least because of the pressure on public services, Johnson has reopened the door to getting a fair hearing on the issue. An important first step.

Briefly, on the drugs advisor, I back Johnson there too. Advisors advise. Ministers have to decide. And if every advisor was allowed to campaign openly against any or every piece of policy because any of every piece of their advice was not being followed to the letter, there would be plenty of room for chaos, little for clear policy.

It is a bit like those civil servants, a minority, who confuse independence and impartiality. They are meant to be impartial. That is not the same thing as being independent. 

I spoke recently to a conference of senior Home Office civil servants and told them that sometimes, on immigration and anti-social behaviour, Tony Blair felt the advisors did not have the same sense of urgency as the politicians who, ultimately, are the ones who have to make decisions and, rightly, get credit where things go well and blame where they don't. 

It is one of the golden rules of democratic politics that you are never allowed to turn towards the public and tell them they are the problem. Like many golden rules, from time to time it deserves to be broken.

Because when you read a survey which states that only 15 per cent of British people worry about global warming and its potential impact on the world, you ask yourself 'do I really live in a country where, when people are asked if they worry about global warming and its potential impact on the world, more than eight out of ten say "No."'?

The figures for developing countries like Brazil, Mexico and India are much higher. Is that because they are more used to weather driven destruction? Or because they have not fallen victim to the 'not bovvered' syndrome which says instant gratification belongs to the individual and any long-term problem belongs to somebody else.

Of course politicians have to take a lead, and will be expected to come to a meaningful agreement at the Copenhagen Summit next month. But if they go with such low levels of interest and awareness back home - and the numbers have fallen from 26 per cent since the recession began, making Britain the 'least concerned' country of twelve surveyed for the Climate Confidence monitor - then their task becomes much harder.

Britain also topped the poll on the question as to whether they thought anything could be done. Almost half said no, against a global average of 38 per cent. 'Not bovvered' plus 'nothing can be done.' A lethal 'public opinion' combination. Meanwhile, Save the Children reckon climate change could take the lives of 250,000 kids next year, as a result of drought, floods, malaria, starvation caused by natural disasters leading to economic collapse. Not bovvered? Nothing to be done?

I wonder what a poll asking whether people really really cared who won X Factor would show? A lot more than 15 per cent I fancy.

When I did a documentary on my breakdown and depression last year, I said that it must be hard bordering on impossible for someone who does not get depression fully to understand what it is like. 

The best description I could come up with is that it is like being dead and alive at the same time. 

It is a feeling I know well. It is a feeling Stephen Fry knows well. It is one he has articulated so well. It is why when I wrote All In The Mind, he was one of the first people I sent it to, and typically generously, he allowed me to use some of his comments on the cover. So when Stephen Fry tweets that he is depressed, and thinking about giving up on Twitter, I join with others in assuming he is in that kind of state. I have sent him a private message. But my public message is that it is no good anyone saying, as people do, well what does he have to be depressed about, what with being incredibly successful, well-off and hugely popular?

That is not how it works. Depression just is. It comes in and takes you over and even if your rational mind knows it will pass, you feel like it is defining your reality for ever. 

It is being assumed, because Stephen made his comments in response to a twitterer who said he found his tweets 'boring,' that this is what triggered it. But it is almost certainly not so, that other factors will have been at play, and I doubt whether Stephen would be very happy if the twitterer in question was subject to a Jan Moir style avalanche. 

I know Stephen fairly well. He is a really nice man as well as being extraordinarily clever and talented. 

When recently he agreed to do one of our 'Audience With' sessions for Leukaemia Research, a packed theatre hung on every word as he recalled key episodes in his life and career. 

He talked about his bipolar depression and recalled the time life got so on top of him that he fled a play he was appearing in, prompting a huge media frenzy which, in his depressed state, he had never imagined would ensue. He might well be feeling the same now, knowing that to some extent he is 'public property' but wishing when depressed that he could just be left alone. 

He also talked about Twitter, and the role it was playing in changing the way people communicate and consume media. 

Coming in the wake of the Jan Moir and Trafigura incidents, he was at pains to dispute the idea that his huge Twitter following made him some kind of leader. He clearly did not see himself in that way. 

Lots of people are saying they hope he does not stop tweeting because his followers enjoy what he has to say. I would simply say he should stop it or not, according to what he wants, and try not to worry too much about what anyone else is saying. 

He knows he has got through depressed periods before, and will do so again. He knows too it is part of what makes him such a creative talent, which in turn is why so many people follow him, and worry about him too. 

A couple of nice surprises on Question Time last night. First, I was fearing real car crash telly with former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith appearing for the first time since she got caught up in the expenses scandal. But she handled herself well in difficult circumstances. So that was surprise numero uno.

Second, it was nice to see John Sergeant on there, talking palpable sense on the Blair/Europe question, and much else besides.

I have known John for a long time, initially as fellow political journalists, then when I was TB's press secretary and he was a BBC journalist, then ITN political editor. The press secretary-journalist relationship is not always easy, and we had the occasional full and frank exchange, but I always found him fair, and I know from his public utterances on the subject that he felt the same about me.

He is also very very funny. Indeed, he started out life as a comic, qualities he put to good effect when he became an unexpected star of Strictly Come Dancing last year.

But in his journalism days I liked the way he was often able to stand aside from the herd mentality which suffuses so much of the Westminster media village. And it was that quality which was on display in his answer about whether TB was the right man for the job of President of the European Council - an unequivocal yes. He expressed considerable bemusement that there was really any doubt, and some concern at what it said about the judgement of the Tories in trying their level best to stop it.

As I know from Summits I have attended where major appointments are being sorted, constant compromising on getting the right people into the right jobs is one of the things that's wrong with Europe. Now of course in such a complicated political structure, politics and personalities will play a part. But as John was arguing, based on considerable knowledge and experience, if the job was being decided on merit, there would be no doubt at all.

Talking of TB, the best thing in the papers today (obviously apart from the re-run in The Sun of part of my blog of yesterday - nice to see a whack at Dave in his new fave paper) is the double page spread picture in Guardian Sport, an aerial shot which shows how the main Olympic sites are developing. One thousand days to go, and it is getting really exciting already.

London 2012 is another important part of the Blair legacy, and the qualities that made it happen provide further evidence of why he would do the Europe job well.

Going full-on for the Games was not an easy decision. There was considerable opposition within and without the government. But he built support and we went for it. And if you talk to anyone involved in Olympic politics, they will confirm that beating the French for the right to host the Games was in very large part down to his presence, and his persuasive skills, in the final days before the decision was made. Those qualities could still do a lot of good for Europe.

Between now and the London Games there will be a world class international sporting event held in Britain at least once every fortnight, starting with the World Cup track cycling in Manchester today. I will be going there for the evening session tomorrow, via another world-class sporting event, Burnley v Hull. Last week, Burnley v Wigan was Marlon King's last game before jail. Tomorrow's could be Phil Brown's last as Hull manager before the sack.

With such exciting sporting fare, is it any wonder that unlike TB, I have no desire to spend any more weekends of my life at European Summits in Brussels? But, like John Sergeant, I can see why TB ought to.

ps -- mini-avalanche of comments on Twitter and Facebook when I tweeted that my son Rory saw Liam Gallagher give fifty quid to a Big Issue seller in South End Green last night. Some seem to think it defeats one of the purposes of Big Issue, namely the chance to make a living rather than beg. But if a seller can get more than the cover price, that is stand on your feet enterprise, so I see nothing wrong in that at all.

Quite a few bitchy comments too, on the lines that Liam G can afford it, so so what? Well yes, of course he can ... so what to you too.

It is fascinating to watch the Conservative contortions over Europe and Tony Blair. They suggest Europe as an issue remains a huge problem for them.

These are problems David Cameron needs to sort out, because if he were to become Prime Minister, one of the many surprises in store for him is just how much of his diary will have to be dedicated to dealing with and about the EU.

If he had an ounce of strategic nous, as opposed to tons of tactical awareness, he would realise just how much of an advantage it would be to him to have a Brit, and a heavy hitter, in the new position that many of Europe's leaders would like TB to fill. 

His opposition reveals something else about Cameron - that a government led by him would be very much a Thatcher-style 'One of Us' government. Churches, charities, pressure groups, voluntary bodies, conciliators, watch out. 

It sometimes infuriated the more tribal members of the Blair team the extent to which he sought to promote and support non Labour people - Tories and Liberal - into important positions overseas, not to mention the way he sought to maintain a dialogue with Margaret Thatcher, and benefit from her experience on foreign policy. But he was probably right on both counts. 

In his 'anyone but Blair' stance, it could be that Cameron just worries having another big British figure around the European scene, much as he sometimes  gets irritated having Boris Johnson so prominent on the London scene. But even with this new position, and even with the focus there would be on TB if he were to be appointed, the elected leaders of the big European powers will remain the main players. 

What TB could do for Europe is pretty clear.    Being a big hitter is only the most obvious. He has proven strengths as a conciliator and negotiator, which doubtless explains the Irish government's support for him. The smaller countries should consult the smaller parties in the peace process for assurance on  how he never overlooked them. He is an energizer and optimist and God knows Europe needs to shake off its introspection and self-doubt. And he is a committed pro-European capable of expressing that support in terms of the benefit to nation states as well as to Europe as a whole.  I see that one of the lines against him run by William Hague is that TB was rejected by the UK, so he should not be foisted on us again by the back door. This is a novel, almost comical take on the outcome of the 2005 election, let alone the 2001 poll, when Hague was Tory leader. Methinks revenge (Hague) and jealousy (Cameron) are playing their part amid the politics (right-wing Eurosceptic) here. 

But it means for Cameron, he has landed himself in a position where the choice is not TB or nobody - but TB or a Benelux federalist. The idea that a party which seeks to uphold the national interest would rather have a non-Brit with a federalist agenda who dislikes Britain because he thinks TB was not federalist enough just shows the perverse contortions the Tory position on Europe throws up.  

The Tories have managed to keep Europe off the radar until recently, but now their odd bedfellows in Eastern Europe, the Lisbon Treaty and the argument over this new position show that this issue never really goes away for them. 

I suspect that - deep down - Cameron probably knows he would do well to have a senior Brit in Brussels who by nature is not a party political point-scorer, and would help him negotiate very, very tricky waters for a Tory PM. But he can't resist the short-term pandering to his Eurosceptic MPs who even now continue to tell people there will be a referendum on Lisbon, and they will bring down the whole shooting match. 

One final point about another of the arguments the Tories are running - namely that TB divided Europe over Iraq. It is true that Iraq was a divisive issue but as a matter of fact 21 out of 25 European governments supported the war, with 10 European PMs controversially signing a joint letter castigating the position of President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder. It is curious that when Dutch PM Jan Pieter Balkenende is mentioned as a possible compromise candidate, nobody points out that he supported the war in Iraq. As did Cameron and Hague. Just one more issue where their stance changes day to day, according to whatever political breeze they detect when they stick their fingers in the air. Leadership it ain't.  

The Financial Times had an interesting editorial yesterday, on shadow chancellor George Osborne's attempt to ally himself with the public anger over bankers' bonuses. At the heart of the article was a question that is asked widely in political and business circles - whether Osborne can be both shadow chancellor, seeking to show he has a grasp of serious economic issues at a time of global recession, and election co-ordinator, a job in which the pressures can sometimes be to act in the short-term interest of an ever shortening media cycle, rather than in the interests of serious policy.

I have made my own contribution to that debate, with this letter in the paper today.

'If you have a strategic weakness, it seems odd to act systematically to exacerbate it. Yet that appears to be the approach of George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.

His weakness is a shortage of credibility among serious economic opinion, not to be confused with media opinion, which went strangely overboard in praise of his speech to the Tory Party conference, or public opinion, which polling would suggest has a mixed but generally negative view of him.

One of the reasons for his strategic weakness is the sense that he is more interested in short-term political tactics than he is in long-term economic policy, a problem the effect of which is exaggerated by his dual role as shadow chancellor and general election campaign co-ordinator. His initiative on curbing bankers' bonuses, which fell apart on minimal scrutiny, is but the latest to draw fire from City and business leaders.  It was attacked not for being tough, but because it was not thought through.

He suffered a similar credibility hit a few weeks ago when brandishing documents he claimed to have been leaked, which in truth had been published at the time of the last Budget. The media mini-frenzy was a short-term tactical gain at the expense of strategic credibility. Likewise the constantly changing figures on savings from his welfare reform proposals do little to enhance his standing.

All these mistakes reveal a trend, which will become a problem during the heat of a campaign, when his Party's positions on the handling of the economic crisis may come under greater scrutiny than they did at the time.

Conservatives point out that Gordon Brown also performed a significant election role alongside his duties as shadow chancellor from 1994-97, and again as chancellor in 2001 and 2005. But as I know from sometimes bitter experience as Tony Blair's press secretary and campaign strategist, Mr Brown was often reluctant to engage in anything which he felt put at risk core credibility on the economy.

In appointing Mr Osborne to both positions, David Cameron perhaps reveals his own weakness in failing to differentiate between strategy and tactics. It might be sensible for the Conservative leader to relieve Mr Osborne of one of his two posts. I sense that the City would like it to be the shadow chancellorship. The Labour Party will be hoping that's the one he keeps.

Alastair Campbell, London NW3'

Thanks to the FT for publishing it. Worth adding here that perhaps the biggest hit on Osborne's credibility stems from his misjudgements when the global economic crisis first erupted. In opposing a fiscal stimulus, he and Cameron set themselves apart not just from the government, the CBI and the IoD but from every other major economy in the world.

The impact on jobs would have been catastrophic, and a reminder of the last Tory recession. The costs of additional unemployment benefits could well have dwarfed the cost of the stimulus he opposed. The construction sector, challenged enough as it is, would  have been hit even harder as housing plans were abandoned and capital projects delayed. The automotive industry would have been similarly battered, with no car scrappage scheme to sustain the 750,000 jobs that indirectly that depend on it.

Oh, and he would have allowed Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley to go to the wall.

These were big calls, and deserve to be much more central to the political debate than they currently are, which is why the FT was right to make the point it made yesterday.

And this week's Spin of the Week award goes to ... drum roll, drum roll ... the Canary Island tourism board, Promotur.

If you don't know why, you probably weren't concentrating yesterday because you are among the 52 per cent of us - allegedly - whose productivity dropped as we struggled to cope with the dark nights closing in now the clocks have gone back.

Surveys? Don't you love them? Don't you love their utter meaningless which nonetheless may conceal a grain of truth?

And what inventiveness for this survey to be done by a tourism board that will be wanting to make us feel in need of the winter light and heat that the Canaries may have to offer.

Why else would they pay for 2000 people to be quizzed on how the dark nights affect their mood and discover that yesterday, lo and behold, was the most unproductive day of the year?

And the grain of truth? Well, I had a fairly substantial pile of work I was hoping to get through yesterday, and substantially failed, as I found myself being distracted by family, visitors, and also allowing the easier and less important work tasks coming to the front of the queue.

You may also have noticed that I couldn't even be bothered to blog till well into the afternoon, and then it was just a cut and paste from an interview I'd done for a Japanese newspaper. As for my daily exercise dose, I planned on doing ninety minutes on the bike, and stopped for a coffee in Regent's Park after less than an hour. 

And by last night - a Monday for heaven's sake - we found ourselves doing what we normally only do at weekends and on holidays, namely watching a DVD - and of a film we had seen before, Slumdog Millionaire. Better second time around by the way.

So by the time I got to my diary, the most interesting observations I had to make were what a spectacularly unproductive day I had had, and how much I wanted to go to India again.

Good job I'm my own boss. 14 per cent of people, says the Canaries' survey, are so unproductive on post clocks going back Monday that their boss tells them off. And eight per cent admitted to calling in sick because they were so depressed at the thought of going to work knowing it would be dark by the time they left for home.

Meanwhile, according to Dr (not sure what type) Christian Jessen (authoritative-sounding Scandinavian name) of Channel 4's 'Embarrassing Illnesses' (what?) 'The Winter Blues are no joke. They can affect your work performance by making you unable to concentrate and carry out your normal roitine, your relationship by affecting your libido and your social life by making you feel irritable and anti-social.'

Better all bugger off to the Canaries then.

Only today, I feel more productive already. Done my morning emails. Begun to clear yesterday's backlog. Done the blog, almost. Got a few meetings, a Leukaemia Research do tonight, and hey, I'm over it. Loving the autumnal colours rather than focussing on the pending late afternoon gloom. It's All In The Mind, to quote a good book.

David Miliband said yesterday that foreign governments, and opposition parties, found it odd in the extreme that Britain's Conservatives were actively campaigning against Tony Blair becoming the first 'President of Europe'.

However TB may be seen at home, where he divides opinion strongly, among the political classes in most countries he is seen as a winner, and as someone capable of managing and delivering change, and communicating the process of change well.

It has been noticeable, for example, how much the new Japanese government, formed by the Democratic Party of Japan, has been studying the Blair government as they make the transition from Opposition to a first term in power, committed to a major programme of reform.

As someone who worked closely with TB over some years, I have found myself in the unexpected position of being much in demand by the Japanese media, and print below an interview which has just appeared in the Nikkei [Nihon Keizai Shimbum], their Financial Times equivalent. The Mr Ozawa referred to is DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, who I saw when he visited London recently to study our system of government, and in particular to examine how we went about managing change.

1. How important is the role of communications in modern politics?
The development of the media age means anyone constantly being defined in the public eye has to be strategic in their communications. Communications strategy cannot be devised wholly separately from policy development and implementation, but must be a consideration throughout.

2.The Blair government was popular but at the same time criticized as a populist regime with spin doctors. How do you view these criticisms?
With a mixture of annoyance, scepticism and indifference, and some recognition that we were too slow to see how the issue of spin was developing as a problem. That being said, the real spin doctors in Britain are the journalists, owners and editors with an agenda, reporters paid to follow that agenda, and a culture of negativity designed to paint politics in a bad light. We had a fair media wind in the early days but that quickly changed and I think it is to the government's great credit that despite the culture of media negativity we achieved a great deal and maintained sufficient popular support to win three successive general elections.

3. With the Labour party seen as losing its support how can the government revitalize itself?
By defending our record properly, by attacking our opponents better and by showing that on matters of substance and policy, we have better ideas than our opponents. This has the merit of truth. The Conservatives are trying to make the election about presentation not policy. 

 4. There seems to be fewer differences between Labour and the Conservative party than ever before. How do you see the future of the two party system in the UK?
There are enormous differences, not least in the different approaches to the economy, public services, welfare, the constitution. There are immense differences on Europe. It is true the scale of difference is perhaps less than when Europe's politics was defined by a battle to the death between capitalism and comminism, which ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But there remain big differences.

5.In your meeting with Mr. Ozawa, you emphasized the importance of "speed" in implementing policies promised during the campaign. Why is this? How long does it take till the public loses interest in the new government?
The public will always be fairly interested in what the government is doing. The point I made is that momentum is important. Some of the most significant policy changes we made were early after our first win in 97 - bank of England independence, devolution, the minimum wage, the new deal on jobs. Also Tony Blair decided early on to make peace in Northern Ireland a priority. We established some clear strategic themes early on and then tried to work to those priorities. Perhaps we could have done even more earlier on.
 
6. How does a new government prioritize its new policies? Where should the focus be?
It should be on the key promises made to get there. For us that meant showing we could be trusted on the economy, public services, introducing promises made on changes to the Constitution, and a new approach in Europe. Setting priorities and making sure they are understood is a key aspect of leadership.

7.What kind of publicity strategy did you advise? What must they avoid?
I emphasised that Japan's political and media culture is different, but that the golden rule of communications for me is to be clear about objectives, work first on the strategy to meet them, and only then think about all the tactical considerations. 
 
8.What was Mr. Ozawa interested in? What kind of questions did he ask? How did you answer them?
He and his team wanted to know how we made the transition from opposition to government. They were very interested in practicalities, not least of how to manage the permanent civil service. I tried as best I could to explain what we did and I hope it had some relevance to them as they make a similar transition.
@ Alastair Campbell worked for Tony Blair as spokesman and communications director from 1994 to 2003 and was also communications director of Labour's 2005 election campaign. His book, The Blair Years, extracts from his diaries, was a Number 1 best-seller

Doubtless a few polls will be kicking around this weekend, and after my message to Labour yesterday to guard against complacency in the face of the BNP, a warning to the Tories today.

December 5, 1996, Gallup poll. Labour 59. Tories 22. Now that's what I call a lead. And they're nowhere near it, because they have not sealed the deal, because they're not serious on policy, because they haven't changed much, and because a lot of people don't really like them.

That's it. Short and sweet today. Off to Burnley now. Hundred per cent home record to defend. No complacency.

I don't suppose that the inside of Nick Griffin's head is a great place to be, what with all that racism, homophobia, curiously selective history, and confusion over what he has or hasn't said in the past. But I would like to be inside that head this morning, to know what he really thinks about his performance on BBC Question Time last night.

Since leaving the studio, where he felt the venom of fellow panellists and audience alike, he will have been enveloped by like-minded staff, family and friends, who will have told him he did well in the face of a five against one onslaught, and an audience rigged as part of the Marxist BBC's multi-cultural hellhole conspiracy against him. They will have told him that sure, he looked a bit nervy at times, but he came over as an underdog fighting off allcomers, and even if he got a bit muddled from time to time about his views on the Holocaust and the Ku Klux Klan, he got in plenty of soundbites that will have had a few of their target voters nodding quietly in agreement. He will survey the papers, and probably take from them a level of exposure undreamed of until he was invited onto the programme, and see that as being more important than the negative slant of most of the articles about him.

His staff will be telling him that the BNP website has never had so many visitors, that some of those have been offering donations and asking to join. They will dismiss most of the attacks upon him as being entirely predictable, but will take some comfort from the observations, from among others Peter Hain, that what the BBC did last night was legitimise the BNP in a way nothing had done up to the point of emission. And if he has any sense, he will now be focussing on next steps, and how to exploit that 'legitimisation.'

How he did, how the other panellists did, how David Dimbleby did, how the audience did, what the effect of the violence outside was ... these are questions that will be discussed all over Britain today, as the country takes stock of what was an important broadcasting and political moment.

But though technically, his performance was poor, the main parties would do well not to share the general media complacency this morning. This was a programme which began after half past ten and finished just before midnight. So the tenor of many of the articles in this morning's papers was well set long before the programme ended and, in many cases, before it began.

I heard one discussion on the radio in which it was said that Griffin had failed because the headlines were terrible for him. But it is always a mistake to confuse media opinion and public opinion. Griffin was not aiming for media popularity because he knows he can't attain it, even if softening the extremist views he genuinely holds. Indeed he attacks the media at every turn as a way of playing up his self-styled underdog/victim of the Establishment status. His immediate goal is simpler: he is the leader of a small party, aiming to become a bit bigger, by targetting messages at people who are disaffected with the main parties and the political process generally.

I suspect last night there were quite a lot of first-time Question Time viewers. There will also have been disaffected Labour supporters, disaffected Tories, people hacked off with all of them because of expenses.  Some with legitimate grievances. Others just too used to living in a media-driven blame culture, in which someone else is always in the way of getting you what you think you want or deserve. These were his targets last night, not the activists who hate him already, or the politicians who find his views repellent, or the leaderwriters or the headline writers, let alone the blacks, Muslims and Jews who are his targets in a very different sense.

We would be foolish to think he made no connection at all with at least some of his political targets. This despite the fact that technically, as I say, he was dreadful. He was clearly nervous, which I suppose was understandable. But the twitching eyes and the constantly fidgeting lips were signs of something more than mild stage fright. So was the loud clapping of semi-humorous points made by others, and the over-rehearsed smile. And at times the content was truly dreadful, prompting justified derision at several points.

And yet, never was there a greater need than now to guard against complacency. Once the furore over his appearance has died down, once the frenzy has abated, he and his supporters will be taking their messages to what may be less challenging environments than last night's hothouse - the doorsteps of the disaffected and the disgruntled. And that is where the mainstream non-racist parties have to fight hardest now.

When an audience member asked whether for example failure on immigration was responsible for the recent relative success of the BNP, the truth is that while we might be able to make a defence of our immigration policies, there are certainly people who have moved to the BNP because they do not believe the main parties listen to them on the issue. They can only be won back by being exposed to a bigger argument and explanation than they will ever get from the slogans of the BNP. But they won't be won back by us saying they're wrong.

Likewise on Europe, we have a largely Eurosceptic media, a Eurosceptic Opposition, and so it becomes more important for Labour politicians to make and win the big arguments about why Europe is a good thing not a bad thing.

At the last local elections, where I live in Camden, Labour's campaign only really found any momentum when the BNP seemed to be getting some traction. Once there was a clear target, it became a bit easier to get over messages about why it was important to reject the politics of race and support a politics of values.

That is what the mainstream parties, and particularly Labour, have to take from these last few days. Politics at its best operates on the basis of strong argument rooted in clear principle. The Tory conference got the Conservatives up in lights in a way that was not wholly beneficial to them. The same can be said of the BNP arising from Griffin's Question Time appearance. And before Tories get too worked up, there the comparison ends.

It has not been a comfortable few days for politics. But provided there is no complacency, and provided Labour understand why people voted for the BNP, and seize the opportunity to take on and defeat the arguments that led them there - so many of which fell apart under a bit of pressure last night - it might yet be possible to look back on last night not as a turning point for Griffin, but a turning point away from him.

And in the meantime, with so many of the public seemingly angry that he was on the programme at all, all of the mainstream parties should be reminding those same members of the public that he only got there because so few of them could be bothered to vote.

With so much focus on Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time tonight, I thought visitors to the site might be interested in this piece from Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking. It is a seat where the BNP has campaigned actively for many years, and where Labour bucked the trend at the European elections, where Griffin's winning of a European Parliamentary seat gave rise to his appearance on the BBC tonight.

I don't agree with everything Margaret says, but she speaks from long experience of fighting the BNP, and her views are worth an airing here. 

The task of taking on and defeating the BNP is one of the most challenging that we face. In my constituency in Barking, we've spent the last two years immersed in local activism trying to do just that.

I want to reflect on what we've been doing and what lessons I think can be learnt - for the campaign against the far-Right and for the Labour Party more widely.

The reasons for the BNP's electoral pull are complex. Yes, it's about changing communities; yes, it's about the loss of traditional industrial jobs; yes, it's about increasing migration; and yes, it's about lack of affordable housing.

But most importantly people are voting for the far-Right as a protest vote.  They feel completely disconnected from and alienated by the Labour Party and the mainstream political class.

For Labour, that's in part because we didn't focus earlier on issues like affordable housing. In part it's because we've not shouted loudly enough about what we have achieved. And in part it's also because we've failed to put forward a coherent narrative on migration - arguing for its benefits while saying we can cut and control it.

But it's also about the Labour Party itself.

First, we've shied away from being bold and honest about our values. Under Tony Blair it almost became a badge of honour. Ideology no longer matters, people would say - it's what works that counts. We were scared of losing the support of the centre ground that we need to win elections.

But managerial competence is not a substitute for ideological conviction. People don't vote for processes - whether it's localism, competition or choice. They do want to know what we stand for. And if we don't articulate that clearly people look to others they think share their values - single issue groups or one of the smaller political parties, including the BNP.

We must have the confidence to reassert our core belief in the pursuit of equality through redistribution. And we must have the confidence to justify that belief by asserting that a more equal society is a more cohesive society, a more efficient society and a morally better society.

Second, in too much of Britain our Labour parties have lost touch with ordinary people.

This is particularly true in the traditional Labour areas, where we got used to weighing the votes in and where we thought the odd leaflet at election time, the occasional mention in the local paper or the smiling face at a polling station was enough.   

So because we aren't engaging directly, people get fed up and feel we're not listening to them. A focus group by the national Labour Party is no substitute for direct contact with individuals in your area. We need to reconnect with local communities and start engaging them in politics.

This is particularly difficult for those of us facing the threat from the far-Right. And no one should pretend there are any easy answers. But it simply doesn't work to condemn those who vote for the BNP as fascist extremists. The party and its activists retain their hideous purpose and ideology, but those who vote for them are doing so because we've lost our connection to those in whose name we claim to campaign and work.

So for the last two years we've completely changed our approach in Barking. Everything we do has to pass the test that it helps us to reconnect to voters - whether it's our work door-to-door, whether it's local campaigns or whether it's my regular coffee afternoons.

And that means starting from where people are at, not from where we would like them to be. We don't set the agenda; our voters do.

Of course, what many people care about most are their homes and their neighbourhoods. So we listen and try and tackle their concerns about their local environment, housing conditions or antisocial behaviour. And if you start delivering then people do start trusting you again. Then they'll start engaging on the other, national issues of the day, like the economy, public spending and Europe.

In Barking we're beginning to experience the signs that we're succeeding.  At the European elections Labour's vote went up 2% and the BNP vote was cut by 5%.

My constituents in Barking won't understand if we continue to refuse to engage in public debate with the BNP. Ignoring them in the hope of denying them the oxygen of publicity will just convince people in my constituency that we don't get it at all.  We need to take them on directly and have the confidence that we can win the argument.

Last Friday I walked into one of my coffee afternoons and was confronted by a woman who was literally trembling with anger at me because she felt Labour had done nothing for her and we'd let all these immigrants get what should rightly have been her's. She was going to vote for the BNP. But by the end of the afternoon she'd felt we'd listened to her and she also listened to us and as I left the room, she came over to me and said ‘Thanks for that Margaret, I'll be voting Labour.'

It is still all to play for out there. But we have to stop blaming others, and look outwards rather than inwards. Whatever the particular local challenges we face, we just all need to get off our backsides and do our bit to reconnect directly with voters in our constituencies. In that way we at least will know we've done our bit to help keep Labour in power.

Margaret Hodge MP and her team are always looking for more volunteers to help them in their campaign to defeat the BNP in Barking. If you are interested please give her office a call on 020 8594 1333 or email her at hodgem@parliament.uk.

This could be a first - a blog containing thanks to a Tory. Not just any old Tory, but the shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve.

Mr Grieve debated the future of human rights with former Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer in front of a room full of human rights lawyers at Doughty Street chambers in London last night.

The event was the idea of what the papers might call my common-law-brother-in-law, Gavin Millar QC, in support of Leukaemia Research's efforts to raise 50k in memory of Henry Hodge as part of our 50th anniversary celebrations next year, when we want 50 such 50k donations, and 'in memory of Henry Hodge'  to be one of the first.

We are still counting, and still chasing a few cheques, but the proceeds from last night are well into five figures already, so many thanks to Dominic, Charlie, Gavin, to Polly Toynbee who chaired it, and to all those who paid to hear the debate. There - I've said it. Thanks to Dominic. That is me thanking a Tory. Enjoy the moment.

It was great to see Charlie back in action. I always enjoyed working with him, and he was a good brain to have around when difficult questions were being addressed. Last night, with his usual wit and his usual shirt-hanging-out-of-trousers look, he tried to pick up inconsistencies between Mr Grieve's speech to his party conference -  shall we say sceptical on human rights - and the pro human rights speech he made last night to a room full of human rights lawyers.

Perhaps the funniest moment of the evening came when Charlie said that if the Toies got into power, Dominic was 'our best hope for human rights ... because you should see the rest.'

But as I am being in kindly and grateful mood, I will merely take at face value Mr Grieve's commitment that a Tory government would operate within the ECHR, his expressions of support for the Human Rights Act, albeit with some criticisms too, and his belief that any changes would be to extend rather than curtail rights.

So thanks again to all of them. If you'd have said to me in the morning that I would enjoy an evening listening to lawyers arguing about human rights, I would have been a bit dubious, what with Champions League being on the telly last night. But I did. So did Henry's widow Margaret. So will the Leikaemia Research bank manager. And no, not so that he can use it to jack up his bonus.

I really hope this is my last word on Biscuitgate. But with yet another Times leader on the subject today (admittedly in the context of their criticism of GB for slow congratulations of gymnast Beth Tweddle for her gold medal) I thought you might be interested in this fact. The Prime Minister was not actually asked the biscuit question when he did a webchat with Mumsnet. So it is something of a triumph for media spin over fact that his non-answer became such an issue. 

I understand that while questions were being posted online - several hundred of them - Mumsnet intermediaries were sifting them in batches and then putting a selection of questions to the PM. He answered 28 of the total, but was unaware until afterwards of the 'what's your favourite biscuit?' question.

It is pretty remarkable that  this has since generated more column inches than the Tories' policy on Europe, but then I have been saying for some time that Labour leaders are more spinned against than spinning.

As for the Tories and Europe, finally William Hague may face some serious questioning over his party's desperate policy, when he meets the American foreign policy establishment in Washington today.

The Obama administration is known to be concerned that a Conservative government would be weakened in Europe as a result of the party's  alliance with far-right parties at the expense of relations with major powers like France and Germany.

The concerns show that while the 'special relationship' may be more important to Britain than to the US as the world's only superpower, the Americans do still look to Britain for its influence within a European Union.

It would also be good to see America's famed Jewish lobby get stuck into the Tories for their links to parties with anti-semitic tendencies and neo-Nazi links, rather than saving all their energies for anyone who dares to criticise Israel.

And finally, talking of racism, and neo-Nazi links, Nick Griffin's condemnation of the General, who dared to criticise his attempts to link the BNP to patriotism and the UK military, as being on a par with Nazi war criminals, suggests he is prone to saying stupid things when under pressure. Regardless of whether the whole thing is a BBC stunt, tomorrow's Question Time matters more than most, and if Griffin comes out with much of that kind of nonsense, it will hopefully do him a lot more harm than good.

A return to three recent blog stamping grounds if I may, namely Jan Moir, Biscuitgate and Oxford student politics.

First, Jan Moir. And a question - where has Mail Obergruppenfuhrer Paul Dacre been as this storm has engulfed his paper? He is always front of queue when it comes to lecturing others on leadership, and yet what has his response been as 21,000 complaints - mine not included I should say as I have no faith in the PCC whatever - have flooded into the Press Complaints Commission? It has been to get Moir to cobble together the ludicrous statement of a few days ago, and to get Janet Street-Porter to pen a 'why oh why did Jan write that piece?' piece in yesterday's paper, while keeping his own sweet head well below the parapet.

The PCC has at least shifted from its original line, that it could only investigate if the subject of the article made a complaint. Stephen Gately was doubtless highly talented, but I'm not sure those talents extend to making a complaint to the PCC from beyond the grave.

Now, the PCC have asked the Mail for their comments. That should be a cosy little chat. Mail Obergruppenfuhrer Dacre can sit down for tea and biscuits with the PCC Code committee chairman, Oberkomiteepresident .... er, Paul Dacre.

Ludicrous. Surely even he realises his chances of that Knighthood for services to journalism are thin.

Now to Biscuitgate. I think this may be a story of the mainstream media's continuing difficulties with handling the new media, with a bit of good old party politics thrown in. Mumsnet had 800 postings for the GB event, and 500 direct questions, of which he answered 28. A good hour's work for both Mumsnet and GB, and the tone was not nearly as negative as the mainstream media would have it.

One of the early negative pieces, a running commentary of GB's performance, came on Times Online's Alpha Mummy, part run by one Sarah Vine, described as a mother of two children. And the father of the two children is Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove, who yesterday led his Times column bemoaning GB's role in ... yes, Biscuitgate. Oh, the plot is thickening faster than you can dunk a jaffa cake in your tea.

Third, Oxford students. Both Peter Mandelson and I have now spoken to Labour students there since the new term started, and a lively bunch they are, but meanwhile a very interesting story has been developing on the Tory side of the fence. This will be of interest to all past, present and future members of the Bullingdon Club.

It seems that at a hustings for election to positions in the Oxford University Conservative Association, one of the tests for the candidates was to recite their favourite racist jokes. This went down a storm with almost all of those present, but offended one or two and the story got out, not least when one of the complainants got beaten up for his pains.

Eventually, two of the jokers - the winner apparently told a joke about black people stealing TV sets, only they used the N word rather than the black people words - were expelled from OUCA. It also led to the University Proctors deciding there was no place for this vile body within the University and they were asked to remove the word 'University' from their title. So they are now OCA not OUCA.

And guess what has happened now? They have been accepted into the Tory Party fold, affiliated to Central Office and Conservative Future, the Tories' youth wing.

Great to know that Cameron's compassionate progressive Conservatism has done so much to shake off the Bullingdon past he professes to find distasteful, don't you think?

How long before 'Biscuitgate' pops up in the ongoing saga of Gordon Brown and his choice of favourite biscuit? Oh, it just did. Richard Nixon, you who opened our politics to the Daddy of the Gates, the Water-one, you have a lot to answer for.

Biscuitgate is real 'can't win territory' for GB, as I learned at the reception prior to the excellent Audience with Stephen Fry for Leukaemia Research at the Criterion, which went some way towards cheering me up after Burnley's defeat at Blackburn.

'Can you explain to me,' asked one Fry-fan as she sipped champagne 'what on earth is wrong with Gordon Brown that he can't just answer a straight question about what his favourite biscuit is?'

I tried to give a possible explanation, namely that the Prime Minister had been trying to engage on Mumsnet  about serious policy issues, and the question might have set a tiny alarm bell ringing that his choice of biscuit could take the discussion, and any subsequent coverage, down a less serious route.

'Yes, but whether he likes it or not,' came the retort 'we live in an age where that kind of question gets asked, and people want to see the human side of their leaders, not just the boring policy stuff.'

It was one of those sessions where you were lucky if you got more than a minute to stay in any one conversation, and as I was hosting the event for the charity, I was trying to do the rounds a bit anyway, so we had to leave the biscuit issue there.  

A few chit-chat sessions later, I was in the company of someone in a state of fury even greater than Mrs Biscuitgate. 'Can you explain to me,' said Fry-fan Number 2 'what on earth Gordon Brown was doing phoning up Simon Cowell to ask how Susan Boyle was standing up to the pressure?' You see what I mean about can't win?

I have never discussed Susan Boyle or biscuits with GB, though I have eaten biscuits with him, as we have been at many meetings where biscuits are on the table. I seem to remember he quite likes shortbread and chocolate digestives. I like jaffa cakes, but they tend not to make it onto Number 10 or Number 11 plates, so I've usually gone for those 'Nice' ones with quite a lot of sugar on them. And frankly, a Boost bar with extra glucose, or a Yorkie bar with (a bit of) biscuit and raisins, beats any biscuit any day of the week. (You see, how ridiculous it would have been if the Prime Minister had started going on about that kind of thing in a serious exchange about childcare, flexible working, minimum wage, policy on carers and so forth - 'Will Brown's biscuit choice give him boost he craves?' 'Why on why does Gordon Brown talk about biscuits when he should be tackling the debt?').

So, back at the Criterion theatre, just as I tried to imagine the Number 10 thought processes re the biscuit question, I tried to do the same re Susan Boyle. At the time of the Boyle frenzy, I suggested to Fry-fan 2, Number 10 will have been getting asked the whole time whether GB watched it - (was it X-factor or Britain's Got Talent, I can't remember) - and this will have been his way of answering.

As with most things in life, you can make a case both ways. Yes, there was a case for saying what his favourite biscuit was. There was also a case for not saying what his favourite biscuit was. Who bloody cares, apart from biscuit manufacturers and newspapers and websites edited by Phil Space?

Yes, there was a case for him not saying anything about Susan Boyle. And there was also a case for him saying something about Susan Boyle, because, as Fry-fan 1 said 'we live in an age where that kind of question gets asked, and people want to see the human side of their leaders, not just the boring policy stuff.'

But again, in the scheme of things, it is not important.The golden rule in both, however, is that if it is not important, don't worry about it. Let the papers blather on. As it happens, there has probably been more biscuit coverage of him not answering than answering, but he was not to know that at the time.

The annoying thing is that it helps David Cameron, because he finds it a lot easier to answer questions about Rich Tea biscuits than he does about why he is giving an inheritance tax cut to his rich mates, or what he intends to do about the Lisbon Treaty now that Czech President Vaclav Klaus has indicated he will not be stalling long enough for a Cameron-led government to have a referendum.

I notice that Biscuitgate gets slightly more space in The Times today, on Page 11, than Klaus-shutting-the-Lisbon-gate-gate gets on Page 20.

But I note too that GB is out and about addressing the issue of climate change, while Dave is probably sitting by his phone hoping one of the papers calls to ask what he thought of Cheryl Cole's performance on X-Factor on Saturday night.

I booked a cab the other day, and saw The Daily Mail lying on the seat next to the driver. 'Sorry,' I said 'you can have me in the cab, or you can have the Mail, but you can't have both.'

It was not the first time I had given this ultimatum to unsuspecting drivers. One or two choose to keep the Mail, so I walk or get the tube, which I should have done in the first place. Others are happy to go along with my eccentricity. So in this instance I was able to take his paper and put  it into the nearest Camden Council recycling box in a neighbour's front garden, and then explain to the cabbie why he and his life would be happier, healthier and all round better if he gave it up.

I apologise to the neighbour of course. I would normally put refuse in my own bins, but I have a golden rule - the Mail is not allowed in the house. That goes for Mail journalists, and the paper itself. My children are also aware that should any of their friends be of the newspaper-reading variety, one such newspaper is a banned substance.

When I published The Blair Years, one of the funnier emails my agent received was from the Mail asking if I would consider serialising the book with them. As it happens, I didn't serialise with anyone, but I would rather die in a vat of boiling oil than take a penny from Obergruppenfuhrer Paul Dacre, the Mail's presiding evil not-so-genius, who in his spare time heads up the Code Committee of the ludicrous Press Complaints Commission.

I see that Suzanne Moore, the 'left-wing' journalist who resigned a position she did not apparently hold in protest at my guest-editing the New Statesman, nonetheless finds her principles are capable of accomodating the taking of the Dacre shilling. Perhaps that's because he has more of them than the Statesman does. Shillings that is, not principles.

I have also been shocked at some of the people who have indeed done serialisation deals with the Mail. Tony Benn, for example, is one of many on the left who, when push comes to shove, are pushed into deals with the Mail. Tut, tut, though he has other redeeming features.

Hating the Mail can be particularly enjoyable at airports. Most of the people I see reading the paper there do so because it is being handed out free as a way of keeping up the figures which are used to justify the exorbitant ad rates. British Airways, I regret to say, are involved in this unpleasant habit, as are BMI. As I say to air stewards who offer me a copy of the Mail if I get on one of their planes, prior to taking it and tearing it in half and giving it back to them, I assume they won't be serving dogshit with the dinner, so why force me to take the media equivalent?

Where other papers are being given out free, it is always worth offering them to fellow passengers, but insisting you relieve them of their Mail, which you can then tear in half and pop into the nearest bin. I don't know if Little Chefs still give out free copies of the Mail. You see, I haven't been in one since I saw them being offered at a Little Chef on the A1. The actual Little Chef - that odd big white building about a hundred miles from London - no longer exists. Shame the Mail didn't go with it.

I should also point out to Tesco that one of the reasons Fiona would not consider them for online shopping is because we learned you can get a free copy of the Mail with your delivery. I know Tesco is a giant, and probably doesn't worry too much about that, but I suspect we are not alone in rejecting companies which actively choose to associate themselves with the Mail.

Yesterday M and S asked for their ad to be moved when they discovered it was alongside Jan Moir's offensive piece about Stephen Gately, which prompted an avalanche of complaint across the web. It will have been a tactical retreat, and given the demographics of the Mail readership, M and S is unlikely to want to give up the paper as a part of its advertising strategy.

But, in these moments when a paper comes under closer scrutiny than usual, not least via the internet, companies will make judgements that might change their behaviour. And pressure brought on advertisers can have an impact. I suggest that all of us, in our own way, bring that pressure to bear.

Meanwhile, thanks to the T-shirt manufacturer who sent me the 'Hated by the Daily Mail' top a few months ago. I shall pop it on with pride as I prepare to go out on my bike. To be hated by The Mail is to know that whatever other faults you may have, you've done something right.

Mail Group Obergruppenfuhrer Paul Dacre continues to hide under his stone so instead of getting his balding head above the parapet to deal with the Stephen Gately storm, he has left it to a statement from the hapless Jan Moir to try to repair the commercial damage her/his article has done.

It reveals hitherto unnoticed comic genius in the twisted Dacre world.

Note the lovely, gentle, soft tone of the statement's opening. 'Some people, particularly in the gay community, have been upset by my article about the sad death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately.'  Sad.. she and Paul were so so sad.

'This was never my intention. Stephen, as I pointed out in the article was a charming and sweet man who entertained millions.' Doesn't the word 'sweet' look lovely in a Mail statement? You can feel the sadness in the sweetness.

'However, the point of my column'' - ah, here we go, I was wondering what the point was - -'which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read' - classic Dacre psychology here, insult the people who complain -  'was to suggest that, in my honest opinion,' (interesting they have to say their opinions are honestly held) 'his death raises many unanswered questions. That was all.' Oh I see, that was the point. His death r